--Kizzilbashi.
"Beg your pardon, Mr. Heldar, but--but isn'tn othin" going to happen?" said Mr.
Beeton.
"No!" Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and his temper
was of the shortest.
"'Tain't my regular business, 'o course, sir; and what I say is, 'Mind your own
business and let other people mind theirs;' but just before Mr. Torpenhow went
away he give me to understand, like, that you might be moving into a house of
your own, so to speak--a sort of house with rooms upstairs and downstairs where
you'd be better attended to, though I try to act just by all our tenants. Don't
I?"
"Ah! That must have been a mad-house. I shan't trouble you to take me there
yet. Get me my breakfast, please, and leave me alone."
"I hope I haven't done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope that as far as
a man can I tries to do the proper thing by all the gentlemen in chambers--and
more particular those whose lot is hard--such as you, for instance, Mr. Heldar.
You likes soft-roe bloater, don't you? Soft-roe bloaters is scarcer than hard-
roe, but what I says is, 'Never mind a little extra trouble so long as you give
satisfaction to the tenants.'"
Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had been long away;
there was no more rioting in the chambers, and Dick had settled down to his new
life, which he was weak enough to consider nothing better than death.
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