who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may
be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering
dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute.
'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without
an extra touch to the neck-band.'

Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant
indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the shore-
wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other than
his own.

'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied.

'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay
ready--with the Napiers; I'll wash, I'll wash.'

'I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me in
the office that you are the writer. Pray don't "Commander" me so much.
--It's not customary, and I object to it.'

'Certainly, certainly,' Timothy acquiesced.

'And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude
in print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are
complimentary, but it happens that I don't like a public patting on the
back.'

'No, and that's true,' said Timothy.

His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on