"Was that Mr. BUMSTEAD, SMYTHE?"
"It wasn't anybody else, your Reverence."
"Say 'his identity with the person mentioned scarcely comes within the
legitimate domain of doubt,' SMYTHE--to Father Dean, the younger of the
piggish persons softly interposes,
"Is Mr. BUMSTEAD unwell, SMYTHE?"
"He's got 'em bad to-night."
"Say 'incipient cerebral effusion marks him especially for its prey at
this vesper hour.' SMYTHE--to Father DEAN," again softly interposes Mr.
SIMPSON, the Gospeler.
"Mr. SIMPSON," pursues Father DEAN, whose name has been modified, by
various theological stages, from its original form of Paudean, to Pere
DEAN--Father DEAN, "I regret to hear that Mr. BUMSTEAD is so delicate in
health; you may stop at his boarding-house on your way home, and ask him
how he is, with my compliments." _Pax vobiscum_.
Shining so with a sense of his own benignity that the retiring sun gives
up all rivalry at once and instantly sets in despair, Father DEAN
departs to his dinner, and Mr. SIMPSON, the Gospeler, betakes himself
cheerily to the second-floor-back where Mr. BUMSTEAD lives. Mr. BUMSTEAD
is a shady-looking man of about six and twenty, with black hair and
whiskers of the window-brush school, and a face reminding you of the
BOURBONS. As, although lighting his lamp, he has, abstractedly, almost
covered it with his hat, his room is but imperfectly illuminated, and
you can just detect the accordeon on the window-sill, and, above the
mantel, an unfinished sketch of a school-girl.
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