 his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with Mrs.
Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was going to ask
him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so
forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing through the open window,
down into the street.
    »Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?« asked Mrs. Sparsit.
    »Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.« He now and then slided
into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs.
Sparsit's personal dignity and claims to reverence.
    »The clerks,« said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible crumb
of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, »are trustworthy, punctual, and
industrious, of course?«
    »Yes, ma'am, pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception.«
    He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the
establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at Christmas,
over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an extremely clear-headed,
cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise in the world. His mind was so
exactly regulated, that he had no affections or passions. All his proceedings
were the result of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without
cause that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of
the steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his
father's death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown, this
excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such a steadfast
adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the
workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound of
tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all gifts have an inevitable
tendency to pauperise the recipient, and secondly, because his only reasonable
transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as little as he
could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having
been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole
duty of man - not a part of man's duty, but the whole.
    »Pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception, ma'am,« repeated Bitzer.
    »Ah - h!« said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking
