... It was nearly two
months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my
dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in almost accidentally
upon my old friend and chum, Jack W----. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop
not a hundred miles from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes
in delicate odours, he passes his leisure hours--the hours when
commerce flags, and people have more pressing affairs to attend to
than the delectation of their nostrils--in the enthusiastic study of
art and _virtu_. His shop is hardly more crammed with bottles and
attar, soap, scents, and all the _etceteras_ of the toilet, than the
rest of his house with prints, pictures, carvings, and curiosities of
every sort. Jack and I went to school together, and sowed our slender
crop of wild oats together; and, indeed, in some sort have been
together ever since. We both have our own collections of rarities,
such as they are, and each criticises the other's new purchases. On
the present occasion there was a new Van Somebody's old painting
awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his door,
than starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell should
he be wanted, he hustled me up stairs, calling by the way to his
housekeeper, Mrs Jones--Jack is a bachelor--to bring up coffee for
two.
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