And I'll ask,'
said Mr. Grewgious, dropping his voice, and speaking with a
twinkling eye, as if inspired with a bright thought: 'I'll ask
Bazzard. He mightn't like it else. - Bazzard!'
Bazzard reappeared.
'Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me.'
'If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, sir,' was the gloomy
answer.
'Save the man!' cried Mr. Grewgious. 'You're not ordered; you're
invited.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Bazzard; 'in that case I don't care if I
do.'
'That's arranged. And perhaps you wouldn't mind,' said Mr.
Grewgious, 'stepping over to the hotel in Furnival's, and asking
them to send in materials for laying the cloth. For dinner we'll
have a tureen of the hottest and strongest soup available, and
we'll have the best made-dish that can be recommended, and we'll
have a joint (such as a haunch of mutton), and we'll have a goose,
or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing of that sort that may
happen to be in the bill of fare - in short, we'll have whatever
there is on hand.'
These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious issued with his usual air of
reading an inventory, or repeating a lesson, or doing anything else
by rote. Bazzard, after drawing out the round table, withdrew to
execute them.
'I was a little delicate, you see,' said Mr. Grewgious, in a lower
tone, after his clerk's departure, 'about employing him in the
foraging or commissariat department. Because he mightn't like it.'
'He seems to have his own way, sir,' remarked Edwin.
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