When they had been out for some hours and were thoroughly fatigued, it
being by that time twilight, Mr Jonas intimated that he would show them
one of the best pieces of fun with which he was acquainted. This joke
was of a practical kind, and its humour lay in taking a hackney-coach
to the extreme limits of possibility for a shilling. Happily it brought
them to the place where Mr Jonas dwelt, or the young ladies might have
rather missed the point and cream of the jest.
The old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son, Manchester
Warehousemen, and so forth, had its place of business in a very narrow
street somewhere behind the Post Office; where every house was in the
brightest summer morning very gloomy; and where light porters watered
the pavement, each before his own employer's premises, in fantastic
patterns, in the dog-days; and where spruce gentlemen with their hands
in the pockets of symmetrical trousers, were always to be seen in
warm weather, contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty warehouse
doorways; which appeared to be the hardest work they did, except now and
then carrying pens behind their ears.
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