'
Pursuing these thoughts, and gasping as he went along, after his
own peculiar fashion, Mr Quilp once more crossed the Thames, and
shut himself up in his Bachelor's Hall, which, by reason of its
newly-erected chimney depositing the smoke inside the room and
carrying none of it off, was not quite so agreeable as more
fastidious people might have desired. Such inconveniences,
however, instead of disgusting the dwarf with his new abode, rather
suited his humour; so, after dining luxuriously from the
public-house, he lighted his pipe, and smoked against the chimney
until nothing of him was visible through the mist but a pair of red
and highly inflamed eyes, with sometimes a dim vision of his head
and face, as, in a violent fit of coughing, he slightly stirred the
smoke and scattered the heavy wreaths by which they were obscured.
In the midst of this atmosphere, which must infallibly have
smothered any other man, Mr Quilp passed the evening with great
cheerfulness; solacing himself all the time with the pipe and the
case-bottle; and occasionally entertaining himself with a melodious
howl, intended for a song, but bearing not the faintest resemblance
to any scrap of any piece of music, vocal or instrumental, ever
invented by man.
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