ering in this way, Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed Mr.
Winkle into the back room, where, amusing himself by boring little
circular caverns in the chimney-piece with a red-hot poker, sat no less
a person than Mr. Benjamin Allen.

'Well!' said Mr. Winkle. 'This is indeed a pleasure I did not expect.
What a very nice place you have here!'

'Pretty well, pretty well,' replied Bob Sawyer. 'I PASSED, soon after
that precious party, and my friends came down with the needful for this
business; so I put on a black suit of clothes, and a pair of spectacles,
and came here to look as solemn as I could.'

'And a very snug little business you have, no doubt?' said Mr. Winkle
knowingly.

'Very,' replied Bob Sawyer. 'So snug, that at the end of a few years
you might put all the profits in a wine-glass, and cover 'em over with
a gooseberry leaf.' 'You cannot surely mean that?' said Mr. Winkle.
'The stock itself--' 'Dummies, my dear boy,' said Bob Sawyer; 'half the
drawers have nothing in 'em, and the other half don't open.'

'Nonsense!' said Mr. Winkle.

'Fact--honour!' returned Bob Sawyer, stepping out into the shop, and
demonstrating the veracity of the assertion by divers hard pulls at the
little gilt knobs on the counterfeit drawers. 'Hardly anything real in
the shop but the leeches, and THEY are second-hand.'

'I shouldn't have thought it!' exclaimed Mr. Winkle, much surprised.

'I hope not,' replied Bob Sawyer, 'else where's the use of appearances,
eh? But what will you take? Do as we do? That's right. Ben, my fine
fellow, put your hand into the cupboard, and bring out the patent
digester.'

Mr. Benjamin Allen smiled his readiness, and produced from the closet at
his elbow a black bottle half full of brandy.

'You don't take water, of course?' said Bob Sawyer.

'Thank you,' replied Mr. Winkle. 'It's rather early. I should like to
qualify it, if you have no objection.'

'None in the least, if you can reconcile it to your conscience,' replied
Bob Sawyer, tossing off, as he spoke, a glass of the liquor with great
relish. 'Ben, the pipkin!'

Mr. Benjamin Allen drew forth, from the same hiding-place, a small brass
pipkin, which Bob Sawyer observed he prided himself upon, particularly
because it looked so business-like. The water in the professional
pipkin having been made to boil, in course of time, by various little
shovelfuls of coal, which Mr. Bob Sawyer took out of a practicable
window-seat, labelled 'Soda Water,' Mr. Winkle