rious disguises, protesting aloud that the
sight was better worth the money than anything they had beheld in all
their lives, and urging the bystanders, with tears in their eyes, not
to neglect such a brilliant gratification. Mrs Jarley sat in the
pay-place, chinking silver moneys from noon till night, and solemnly
calling upon the crowd to take notice that the price of admission was
only sixpence, and that the departure of the whole collection, on a
short tour among the Crowned Heads of Europe, was positively fixed for
that day week.

'So be in time, be in time, be in time,' said Mrs Jarley at the close
of every such address. 'Remember that this is Jarley's stupendous
collection of upwards of One Hundred Figures, and that it is the only
collection in the world; all others being imposters and deceptions. Be
in time, be in time, be in time!'

CHAPTER 33

As the course of this tale requires that we should become acquainted,
somewhere hereabouts, with a few particulars connected with the
domestic economy of Mr Sampson Brass, and as a more convenient place
than the present is not likely to occur for that purpose, the historian
takes the friendly reader by the hand, and springing with him into the
air, and cleaving the same at a greater rate than ever Don Cleophas
Leandro Perez Zambullo and his familiar travelled through that pleasant
region in company, alights with him upon the pavement of Bevis Marks.

The intrepid aeronauts alight before a small dark house, once the
residence of Mr Sampson Brass.

In the parlour window of this little habitation, which is so close upon
the footway that the passenger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass
with his coat sleeve--much to its improvement, for it is very dirty--in
this parlour window in the days of its occupation by Sampson Brass,
there hung, all awry and slack, and discoloured by the sun, a curtain
of faded green, so threadbare from long service as by no means to
intercept the view of the little dark room, but rather to afford a
favourable medium through which to observe it accurately. There was
not much to look at. A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers,
yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously
displayed upon its top; a couple of stools set face to face on opposite
sides of this crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the
fire-place, whose withered arms had hugged full many a client and
helped to squeeze him dry;