"I think, sir, he's a little _luny_," replied Ginger Nut with a grin.

"You hear what they say," said I, turning towards the screen, "come
forth and do your duty."

But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity.
But once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the
consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little
trouble we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at
every page or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion that this
proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his
chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth
occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the
screen. And for his (Nippers') part, this was the first and the last
time he would do another man's business without pay.

Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but
his own peculiar business there.

Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy
work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly.
I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any
where. As yet I had never of my personal knowledge known him to be
outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At
about eleven o'clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut
would advance toward the opening in Bartleby's screen, as if silently
beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy
would then leave the office jingling a few pence, and reappear with a
handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving