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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 567
his dingy college gown. He had paraded his Master of Arts degree
in many thousand tavern parlours, where his Greek and learning had
got him a kind of respect. He patronised landlords, and strutted
by hostesses' bars with a vinous leer or a tipsy solemnity. He
must have been very far gone and debased indeed when he could
still think that he was any living man's better :—he, who ought
to have waited on the waiters, and blacked Boots's own shoes.
When he had reached a certain stage of liquor he commonly began
to brag about the University, and recite the titles of his friends of
early days. Never was kicking more righteously administered than
that which Philip once bestowed on this miscreant. The fellow
took to the gutter as naturally as to his bed, Firmin used to say ;
and vowed that the washing there was a novelty which did him
good.
Mrs. Brandon soon found that her surmises were correct regarding
her nameless visitor. Next day, as she was watering some
little flowers in her window, she looked from it into the street,
where she saw the shambling parson leering up at her. When she
saw him he took off his greasy hat, and made her a bow. At the
moment she saw him, she felt that he was come upon some errand
hostile to Philip. She knew he meant mischief as he looked up
with that sodden face, those bloodshot eyes, those unshorn grinning
lips.
She might have been inclined to faint, or disposed to scream,
or to hide herself from the man, the sight of whom she loathed.
She did not faint, or hide herself, or cry out : but she instantly
nodded her head and smiled in the most engaging manner on that
unwelcome dingy stranger. She went to her door ; she opened it
(though her heart beat so that you might have heard it, as she told
her friend afterwards). She stood there a moment archly smiling
at him, and she beckoned him into her house with a little gesture
of welcome. "Law bless us" (these, I have reason to believe,
were her very words)—" Law bless us, Mr. Hunt, where ever have
you been this ever so long ?" And a smiling face looked at him
resolutely from under a neat cap and fresh ribbon. Why, I know
some women can smile and look at ease when they sit down in a
dentist's chair.
"Law bless me, Mr. Hunt," then says the artless creature,
" who ever would have thought of seeing you, I do declare !" And
she makes a nice cheery little curtsey, and looks quite gay, pleased,
and pretty ; and so did Judith look gay, no doubt, and smile and
prattle before Holoferaes; and then of course she said, " Won't you
step in ?" And then Hunt swaggered up the steps of the house,
and entered the little parlour, into which the kind reader has