“Oh!” said Mr Skimpole. “His pocket? Now, you are coming to what I don’t understand.” Taking a little more claret, and dipping one of the cakes in it, he shook his head, and smiled at Ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.

“If you go with him here or there,” said my guardian, plainly, “you must not let him pay for both.”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr Skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the comicality of this idea, “what am I to do? If he takes me anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I had any money, I don’t know anything about it. Suppose I say to a man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue the subject, with any consideration for the man. I don’t go about asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish — which I don’t understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and sixpence is in Money — which I don’t understand?”

“Well,” said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless reply, “if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that circumstance), and leave the calculation to him.”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr Skimpole, “I will do anything to give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form — a superstition. Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I thought Mr Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money.”

“Indeed it is not so, sir,” said Ada. “He is poor.”

“No, really?” returned Mr Skimpole, with his bright smile, “you surprise me.”

“And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed,” said my guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr Skimpole’s dressing-gown, “be you very careful not to encourage him in that reliance, Harold.”

“My dear good friend,” returned Mr Skimpole, “and my dear Miss Siunmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It’s business, and I don’t know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire them — as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell him so.”

The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us, the lighthearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian’s case. The more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any one for whom I cared.

Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young ladies and Mrs Skimpole, who had once been a beauty, but was now a delicate high- nosed invalid suffering under a complication of disorders.

“This,” said Mr Skimpole, “is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa — plays and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment daughter, Laura — plays a little but don’t sing. This is my Comedy daughter, Kitty — sings a little but don’t play. We all draw a little, and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.”