green one minute and brown the next: with a velvet collar
of the same cameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head
large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the
propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which
it had never recovered. Being short-necked and asthmatic, however, he respired
principally through this feature; so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it
made up in usefulness.
    »I'm sure to bring him through it,« said Mr. Pell.
    »Are you though?« replied the person to whom the assurance was pledged.
    »Certain sure,« replied Pell; »but if he'd gone to any irregular
practitioner, mind you, I wouldn't have answered for the consequences.«
    »Ah!« said the other, with open mouth.
    »No, that I wouldn't,« said Mr. Pell; and he pursed up his lips, frowned,
and shook his head mysteriously.
    Now, the place where this discourse occurred, was the public-house just
opposite to the Insolvent Court; and the person with whom it was held, was no
other than the elder Mr. Weller, who had come there, to comfort and console a
friend, whose petition to be discharged under the act, was to be that day heard,
and whose attorney he was at that moment consulting.
    »And vere is George?« inquired the old gentleman.
    Mr. Pell jerked his head in the direction of a back parlour: whither Mr.
Weller at once repairing, was immediately greeted in the warmest and most
flattering manner by some half-dozen of his professional brethren, in token of
their gratification at his arrival. The insolvent gentleman, who had contracted
a speculative but imprudent passion for horsing long stages, which had led to
his present embarrassments, looked extremely well, and was soothing the
excitement of his feelings with shrimps and porter.
    The salutation between Mr. Weller and his friends was strictly confined to
the freemasonry of the craft; consisting of a jerking round of the right wrist,
and a tossing of the little finger into the air at the same time. We once knew
two famous coachmen (they are dead now, poor fellows) who were twins, and
between whom an unaffected and devoted attachment existed. They passed each
other on the Dover road, every day, for twenty-four years, never exchanging any
other greeting than this; and yet, when one died, the other pined