Richard Swiveller thrust his lank arm out of bed, and, gripping her by the wrist and drawing her close to him, bade her out with it, and freely too, or he would not answer for the consequences; being wholly unable to endure that state of excitement and expectation. She, seeing that he was greatly agitated, and that the effects of postponing her revelation might be much more injurious than any that were likely to ensue from its being made at once, promised compliance, on condition that the patient kept himself perfectly quiet, and abstained from starting up or tossing about.

‘But if you begin to do that,’ said the small servant, ‘I’ll leave off. And so I tell you.’

‘You can’t leave off till you have gone on,’ said Dick. ‘And do go on, there’s a darling. Speak, sister, speak. Pretty Polly say — Oh tell me when, and tell me where, pray Marchioness, I beseech you!’

Unable to resist these fervent adjurations, which Richard Swiveller poured out as passionately as if they had been of the most solemn and tremendous nature, his companion spoke thus:

‘Well! Before I run away, I used to sleep in the kitchen — where we played cards, you know. Miss Sally used to keep the key of the kitchen door in her pocket, and she always come down at night to take away the candle and rake out the fire. When she had done that, she left me to go to bed in the dark, locked the door on the outside, put the key in her pocket again, and kept me locked up till she come down in the morning — very early I can tell you — and let me out. I was terrible afraid of being kept like this, because if there was a fire, I thought they might forget me and only take care of themselves you know. So whenever I see an old rusty key anywhere, I picked it up and tried if it would fit the door, and at last I found in the dust cellar a key that did fit it.’

Here, Mr Swiveller made a violent demonstration with his legs. But the small servant immediately pausing in her talk, he subsided again, and, pleading a momentary forgetfulness of their compact, entreated her to proceed.

‘They kept me very short,’ said the small servant. ‘Oh! you can’t think how short they kept me! So I used to come out at night after they’d gone to bed, and feel about in the dark for bits of biscuit, or sangwitches that you’d left in the office, or even pieces of orange peel to put into cold water and make believe it was wine. Did you ever taste orange peel and water?’

Mr Swiveller replied that he had never tasted that ardent liquor; and once more urged his friend to resume the thread of her narrative.

‘If you make believe very much, it’s quite nice,’ said the small servant; ‘but if you don’t, you know, it seems as if it would bear a little more seasoning, certainly. Well, sometimes I used to come out after they’d gone to bed, and sometimes before, you know; and one or two nights before there was all that precious noise in the office — when the young man was took, I mean — I come upstairs while Mr Brass and Miss Sally was a sittin’ at the office fire; and I’ll tell you the truth, that I come to listen again about the key of the safe.’

Mr Swiveller gathered up his knees so as to make a great cone of the bed-clothes, and conveyed into his countenance an expression of the utmost concern. But the small servant pausing, and holding up her finger, the cone gently disappeared, though the look of concern did not.

‘There was him and her,’ said the small servant, ‘a sittin’ by the fire, and talking softly together. Mr Brass says to Miss Sally, “Upon my word,” he says “it’s a dangerous thing, and it might get us into a world of trouble, and I don’t half like it.” She says — you know her way — she says, “You’re the chickenest- hearted, feeblest, faintest man I ever see, and I think,” she says, “that I ought to have been the brother, and you the sister. Isn’t Quilp,” she says, “our principal support?” “He certainly is,” says Mr Brass, “And an’t we,” she says, “constantly ruining somebody or other in the way of business?” “We certainly are,” says Mr Brass. “Then does it signify,” she says, “about ruining this Kit when Quilp desires it?” “It certainly does not signify,” says Brass. Then, they whispered and laughed for a long time about there being no