



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