somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a
cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon
him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring
over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the
general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson’snever by any means in it, unless called in
was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who
served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during
business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was
represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his
express image. People understood that Tellson’s, in a stately way,
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some
person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person
to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful
occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the
easterly parish church of Houndsditch, he had received the added
appellation of Jerry.
The scene was Mr. Cruncher’s private lodging in Hangingsword
Alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock and
a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and
eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord
as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the
Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a
lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher’s
apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but
two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it
might be co