He opened forth:

‘Look at that grate, sir! Do you call that comfort – tawdry rags of blue and yellow paper instead of a good fire?’

‘It’s June, sir,’ replied the waiter. ‘18th inst. We never put on fire in the low-rooms after May goes out.’

‘Damn you,’ said the bagman. ‘Light a fire directly, or I’ll send for your master and give him a jobation to his face about it. Let me tell you, your people here at Stancliffe’s get abominably careless. Such a blackguard dinner as I had here last circuit! But I promise you if you set me down to such another I’ll put up at the Stuart Arms in future. Light a fire, sir, and take my coat. If you leave a wet thread on it I’ll subtract it from the reckoning. Bring me some hot punch and oysters for supper, and mind the chambermaid airs my bed well. I’d damp sheets last time I slept here, I’ll be d—ed if I had not.’

Your Angrian commercial traveller is one of the greatest scamps in existence, much on a par with your Angrian newspaper editor. Anything more systematically unprincipled, more recklessly profligate than these men, taking them as a body, is not easy to conceive. Characters indicative of these vices were legibly written in the faces of the half-dozen gentlemen gathered on this stormy evening in the apartment to which I have introduced my readers. Conversation did not flag amongst them. Amidst the ringing of crushers and tumblers, such sentences were heard as the following:

‘Brown, I say, you’re lucky to have no further to go to-night!’

‘Well, and so are you, an’t you?’

‘Me! I must push on ten miles further if it rain cats and dogs: I must be in Edwardston by nine to-night to meet one of our partners.’

‘Which of them: Culpeper or Hoskins?’

‘Culpeper, ac—d cross-grained dog.’

‘Pretty weather, this, for June ain’t it?’ interpolated a young dandy with red curls and velvet waistcoat.

‘Aye, as pretty as your phiz,’ replied the furious man who had ordered the fire to be lit, and who was now sitting with both his feet on the fender, full in front of the few smoky coals which in obedience to his mandates had been piled together.

‘I say, can you change me a bank-note?’ asked one man with his chin shrouded in a white shawl.

‘Bank of Angria or private bank?’ said the person whom he had addressed.

‘Private bank – of our own Amos Kirkwall and sons.’

‘I can change it with our pound notes – Edward Percy’s and Steaton’s: I got them at their warehouse this afternoon.’

‘I’d prefer these any day to sovereigns – less chance of their being counterfeit.’

‘Well, and how go politics to-day?’ asked a smart traveller in a gold chain, slapping on the shoulder a studious individual deeply absorbed in the perusal of a newspaper.

‘God knows!’ was the answer. ‘I should not be much astonished to hear of the Prime Minister resigning.’

‘And he will if he does his duty,’ exclaimed a third person. ‘Have you seen the War Despatch for this morning? My word, their people do go it!’

‘Manly, independent print, the War Despatch,’ answered the first speaker. ‘Delivers the sentiments of the nation at large. Curse it – who’s to hinder us from asserting our rights? Aren’t we all free-born Angrians?’

‘The Rising Sun swears that Percy has tendered his resignation, and been solicited to withdraw it. What do you think of that?’

‘That he had a capital opportunity of discharging with interest many a long bill of insults he has been storing up against the Czar for these three years at least.’

‘But I think it would hardly be like him to let such an opportunity pass, if it be so. Brandy and Water! He’ll serve them out next sessions, in style.’

‘By G—d, that he will, and before next sessions too. A propos of that, they say some of the leaders in the War Despatch are penned by him.’

‘Very likely; he’s a real trump-card. Do you deal with him?’

‘No, our house is in the cutlery-line.’

‘We do, or rather, we did a while since; but he screwed so hard in that last bargain about some casks of madder, and came down so prompt for payment at a time when ready money was rather scarce with us, that our senior partner swore upon the Gospels he’d burn his fingers in that oven no more.’

The furious man, who had hitherto sat silent, here turned from the fire which he had by this time coaxed into something like a blaze and growled sotto-voce: ‘Shall be happy to supply you, Mr Drake, with madder, indigo, logwood and barilla of all qualities on the most reasonable terms. Shall feel obliged if you will favour me with an order. May I put you down?’ He drew out a pocket-book and unsheathed a pencil.

‘Of what house?’ asked Mr Drake.

‘I do for Milnes, Duff & Stephenson, Dyers, Anvale,’ answered the fire-eater.

‘Humph!’ rejoined Drake with a kind of sneer. ‘I’ve seen that firm mentioned somewhere.’ He affected to ponder for a moment, then, snapping his fingers: ‘I have it! It was in the Gazette. Paid a second dividend, I think, a month ago – half-a-crown in the pound.’

The man of choler said nothing: he was flabbergasted. But he leaned back in his chair, and, lifting both feet from the fender, he deposited one on each hob. His favourite element, now burning clear and red, seemed to console him for every contre-temps.

‘Drat it, the weather’s clearing!’ suddenly ejaculated that gentleman who had declared his obligation to be at Edwardston by nine o’clock. He rushed out of the room and, having peremptorily ordered his gig, rushed back again; and having swallowed the contents of a capacious tumbler besought Dawson to help him on with his d—d mackintosh. Then, as he settled the collar about his neck, he bade an affectionate adieu to the said Dawson in the words:

‘Go it old cock! goodbye! Judging by thy nose next circuit will use thee up.’

I saw him from the window mount his gig and flash down the still wet street like a comet.

In truth, the clouds for the first time that day were now beginning to separate.