Our relative had kindly arranged to teach me something in the
dinner-hour, from twelve to one, I think it was, every day. But an
arrangement so incompatible with counting-house business soon died
away, from no fault of his or mine; and for the same reason, my small
work-table, and my grosses of pots, my papers, string, scissors,
paste-pot, and labels, by little and little, vanished out of the recess
in the counting-house, and kept company with the other small
work-tables, grosses of pots, papers, string, scissors, and paste-pots,
downstairs. It was not long before Bob Fagin and I, and another boy
whose name was Paul Green, but who was currently believed to have been
christened Poll (a belief which I transferred, long afterward again, to
Mr. Sweedlepipe, in "Martin Chuzzlewit"), worked generally side by
side. Bob Fagin was an orphan, and lived with his brother-in-law, a
waterman. Poll Green's father had the additional distinction of being
a fireman, and was employed at Drury Lane Theatre, where another
relation of Poll's, I think his little sister, did imps in the
pantomimes.
No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship; compared these every-day associates with those of my
happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a
learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast.
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