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upstairs; purposing, in the fervour of his affectionate zeal, to apply
his ear once more to the keyhole, and quiet his mind by assuring himself
that the hard-hearted patient was going on well. It happened that Mr
Pecksniff, coming softly upon the dark passage into which a spiral ray
of light usually darted through the same keyhole, was astonished to find
no such ray visible; and it happened that Mr Pecksniff, when he had felt
his way to the chamber-door, stooping hurriedly down to ascertain by
personal inspection whether the jealousy of the old man had caused this
keyhole to be stopped on the inside, brought his head into such violent
contact with another head that he could not help uttering in an audible
voice the monosyllable 'Oh!' which was, as it were, sharply unscrewed
and jerked out of him by very anguish. It happened then, and lastly,
that Mr Pecksniff found himself immediately collared by something which
smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of beer, a cask of warm
brandy-and-water, and a small parlour-full of stale tobacco smoke,
mixed; and was straightway led downstairs into the bar from which he
had lately come, where he found himself standing opposite to, and in
the grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still stranger appearance
who, with his disengaged hand, rubbed his own head very hard, and looked
at him, Pecksniff, with an evil countenance.

The gentleman was of that order of appearance which is currently termed
shabby-genteel, though in respect of his dress he can hardly be said to
have been in any extremities, as his fingers were a long way out of his
gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from
the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a
bluish grey--violent in its colours once, but sobered now by age and
dinginess--and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict
between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in
danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in colour blue and of
a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to his chin. His cravat was,
in hue and pattern, like one of those mantles which hairdressers are
accustomed to wrap about their clients, during the progress of the
professional mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass that it would
have been hard to determine whether it was originally white or black.
But he wore a moustache--a shaggy moustache too; nothing in the meek and
merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style; the regular
Satanic sort of thing--and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of
unbrushed hair. He was very dirty and very jaunty; very bold and very
mean; very swaggering and very slinking; very much like a man who might
have been something better, and unspeakably like a man who deserved to
be something worse.

'You were eaves-dropping at that door, you vagabond!' said this
gentleman.

Mr Pecksniff cast him off, as Saint George might have repudiated the
Dragon in that animal's last moments, and said:

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