



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Volume 1, Chapter I.

DUPLEX STREET.

"Some people are such fools!" said Richard Pellet; and, if public
judgment was right, he knew what a fool was as well as any man in the
great city of London.  He was a big man was Richard Pellet, Esq., C.C.,
shipper, of Austin Friars, and known among city men as "the
six-hundred-pounder;" and he knew a fool when he saw one.  But whether
at his office in the city, or down at his place at Norwood,--"his little
place at Norwood," where he had "a morsel of garden" and "a bit of
glass," and grew pine and melon, peach and grape, and had a fat butler
in black, and a staff of servants in drab, trimmed with yellow
coach-lace,--no matter where Richard Pellet might be, he could always
see in his mind's eye the greatest fool that ever breathed--the man whom
he was always mentally abusing--to wit, his brother Jared.

But Jared Pellet always was a fool--so his brother said; and he was
continually filling the foolish cup of his iniquitous folly fuller and
more full.  He was a fool to be tyrannised over by his brother when a
boy, and to take all the punishment that should have fallen to Richard's
share; he was a fool to marry Lizzie Willis, who had not a penny, when
Richard would have given his ears to stand in his shoes; he was a fool
for being happy--loved and loving; he was a fool to have such a large
family; he was a fool for being a poor struggling man, while his brother
was so rich; in short, taking Richard Pellet's opinion--which must have
been correct, seeing how wealthy, and stout, and clean shaven, and
respected he was--there was not a bigger fool upon the face of the
earth!

Just as if it was likely that a man could get a living in Clerkenwell by
mending musical instruments in so unmusical a place; doctoring
consumptive harmoniums; strengthening short-winded concertinas;
re-buffing a set of hammers, or tuning pianos and putting in new strings
at one shilling each.

However, living or no living, Jared Pellet rented a house in Duplex
Street, Clerkenwell; and there was a brass plate on the door, one which
Patty Pellet brightened to such an extent that when the sun did shine in
Duplex Street--which was not often--it would kiss the bright metal and
then shoot off at various angles to dart into darksome spots where,
directly, he seldom or never shone.

It was a bright plate that, and a couple more years of such service
would have oiled and rotten-stoned and rubbed and polished out the
legend, "J. Pellet, Pianoforte Tuner;" for at this time there was but
little of the original black composition left in the letters, and as for
the corner flourishes, they were quite gone.  But there was a board up
over the front parlour window, bearing, in gold letters, much decayed,
the self-same legend, with the addition of "Musical Instruments
Carefully Repaired;" while, so that there might be no mistake about the
indweller's occupation, a couple of doleful-looking, cracked, and
wax-ended clarionets sloped from the centre hasp to either side of the
said front parlour window; and where by rights there should have been
one of those folding-door green Venetian barred blinds so popular in the
district, there graced the bottom panes--"The Whole Art of Singing,"
"Beaustickski's Violin Tutor," and "Instructions for the Concertina"--
fly-stained and dust-tarnished books, that had been put in on Monday
mornings and taken out again on Saturday nights, in company with the
cracked clarionets, ever since Jared Pellet had hired the place, and
determined upon keeping it private on Sundays.

There was nothing else very particular about the house save that it had
once entered into the heart of its owner to have the front stuccoed,
ever since which time it had suffered severely from a kind of leprosy
which made it shell and peel off abundantly; and that the top pane of
the parlour window had once been cracked by a tip-cat, forming a star
whose rays extended to the putty all round, starting now from a round
dab of the same material.  Jared did not have that pane mended, saying
that it would soon give way, and then they would have a fresh one put
in; but that starred and puttied pane bore a charmed life, having
outlived every one of its eleven brethren, who had all gone to the limbo
of broken glass, while it still remained.  It may perhaps be mentioned,
though, that there were some rusty iron railings laid horizontally
beneath the window, forming the kitchen into a cage, and just
sufficiently far apart to allow of playthings of every description being
dropped into the area; when would come the ringing of the door-bell to
ask for restitution of the treasure.  At intervals, too, there would be
the trouble of some child or other getting its foot firmly fixed between
the bars, to remain the centre of a commiserating crowd until the
arrival of its incensed parent, and the extrication of the imprisoned
member, minus shoe or boot, which of course followed the example of
Newton's apple, illustrating the force of gravity for the benefit of
Jared's children.

There was a watchmaker's next door to Jared's on the right, and a
watch