Suddenly
catching sight of SMALLEY in the distance, he furiously grasps a stone
to throw at him; but, allowing his arm to describe too much of a circle
before parting with the stone, the latter strikes the back of his own
head, and he goes on, much confused.
Arriving in his own room, and arising from the all-fours attitude in
which, from eccentricity, he has ascended the stairs, Mr. BUMSTEAD takes
from a cupboard a curious, antique flask, and nearly fills a tumbler
from its amber-hued contents. He drinks the potion with something like
frenzy; then softly steals to the door of a room opening into his own,
and looks in upon EDWIN DROOD. Calm and untroubled lies his nephew
there, in pleasant dreams. "They are both asleep," whispers Mr. BUMSTEAD
to himself. He goes back to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a
chair caught in his coat-tail; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella over
his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions.
CHAPTER VI.
INSURANCE IN GOSPELER's GULCH.
The Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON (OCTAVIUS, because there had been seven
other little SIMPSONS, who all took after their father when he died of
mumps, like seven kittens after the parental tail,) having thrown
himself all over the room with a pair of dumb-bells much too strong for
him, and taken a seidlitz powder to oblige his dyspepsia, was now
parting his back hair before a looking-glass.
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