d a little on one side,
a very bird-like air. He trod, too, gingerly and lightly, very like a
sparrow or a tomtit; and, to complete the analogy, his head being
almost always surmounted by a pen, he had a sort of crested,
blue-jayish aspect, that was rather comical. Quillpen had a very
little wife and three very little children, Bob, Chiffy, and the baby;
the last the ultimate specimen of the _diminuendo_. It was well for
them that they were so small, for Quillpen obtained his _starvelihood_
by driving the quill for Mr. Latitat at four hundred dollars a year,
to which Mrs. Quillpen added, from time to time, certain little sums
derived from making shirts and overalls at the rate of about ten cents
the million stitches.

Whether Mr. Latitat was able to pay more was a question that never
entered the minute brain of Simon Quillpen; for he had so humble an
opinion of his own merits, and was always so contented and cheerful,
that he regarded his salary as enormous, and was wont playfully to
sign little confidential notes Croesus Quillpen and Girard Quillpen,
and on rare convivial occasions would sometimes style himself Baron
Rothschild. But this last title was very rarely indulged in, because
it once sent his particular crony, a chuckle-headed clerk in the
post-office, into a cachinnatory fit which was "rayther in the
apoplectic line."

"To return to our muttons." Simon dug away at his copying with an
occasional reverential glance at a certain low oaken door, opening
into the _penetralia_ of this abode of law and righteousness, behind
which oaken door, at that very moment, sat Mr. Lucius Latitat, either
deeply engaged in the solution of some vast legal problem, or
calculating the interest on an outstanding note, or consulting with
chuckling delight a list of mortgages to be foreclosed.

Well--Quillpen finished his document, wiped his pen on a thick velvet
butterfly, laid it in the rack above the ink, pushed back his chair
from the table, withdrew the cambric sleeve from his right arm, and
smoothed down his wristbands, having first put on his India rubber
overshoes. The fact is, he was very anxious to get home, and he could
not go without first seeing Mr. Latitat. The idea of knocking at Mr.
Latitat's door on business of his own never once occurred to him. He
would do that for a client, but not for himself. So he ventured on a
series of low coughs, and finding no notice was taken of them, he
dropped the poker into the coalh