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Updated: June 6, 2025
To Horace surrounded as he was by incalculable riches sweetbreads seemed incongruous just then; the transition of thought was too violent. "I can't bother about that now, Mrs. Rapkin," he said; "we'll settle it to-morrow. I'm too busy." "I suppose most of these things will have to go back, sir, if they're only sent on approval like?" If he only knew where and how he could send them back!
Rapkin," said Horace; "only, if the house was as you describe last night, how do you account for its being all right this morning?" Mrs. Rapkin in her embarrassment was reduced to folding her apron into small pleats. "It's not for me to say, sir," she replied, "but, if I was to give my opinion, it would be as them parties as called 'ere on camels the other day was at the bottom of it."
"For the last time, Rapkin," he cried in despair, "do you mean to tell me there's no dinner ready?" "Oh," said Rapkin, "there's dinner right enough, and a lot o' barbarious furriners downstairs a cookin' of it that's what broke Maria's 'art to see it all took out of her 'ands, after the trouble she'd gone to." "But I must have somebody to wait," exclaimed Horace.
"I I'm not sure," he said; "I may have to keep them." "Well, sir, bargain or none, I wouldn't have 'em as a gift myself, being so dirty and fusty; they can't be no use to anybody, not to mention there being no room to move with them blocking up all the place. I'd better tell Rapkin to carry 'em all upstairs out of people's way."
Even Mrs. Rapkin could not succeed in making anything of them except camels. "What the deuce does a caravan of camels want in Vincent Square?" said Horace, with a sudden qualm for which he could not account. "Most likely they belong to the Barnum Show, sir," suggested his landlady. "I did hear they were coming to Olympia again this year." "Why, of course," cried Horace, intensely relieved.
After protracted mental conflict, she grudgingly suggested gravy soup which Horace thought too unenterprising, and rejected in favour of mock turtle. "Well then, fish?" he continued; "how about fish?" Mrs. Rapkin dragged the depths of her culinary resources for several seconds, and finally brought to the surface what she called "a nice fried sole."
"Don't talk such infernal I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rapkin; but why on earth should Barnum and Bailey's camels come out of their way to call on me? It's ridiculous, you know!" said Horace, irritably. "Ridicklous it may be, sir," she retorted, "but they're all layin' down on the road opposite our door, as you can see and them niggers is making signs to you to come out and speak to 'em."
"Very!" said Horace, savagely, and returned to his room, which Mrs. Rapkin had now left. His hands shook, though not with joy, as he untied some of the sacks and bales and forced open the outlandish-looking chests, the contents of which almost took away his breath.
"Oh, if you must!" he said, not too graciously; "only do look sharp about it there's a crowd collecting already, and I don't want to have a constable here." He returned to his rooms, where he found Mrs. Rapkin paralysed with amazement. "It's it's all right," he said; "I'd forgotten it's only a few Oriental things from the place where that brass bottle came from, you know.
Rapkin!" he shouted, going to another arch that seemed to communicate with the basement. "Sir?" replied his landlord, who had just returned from his "reading-room," and now appeared, without a tie and in his shirt-sleeves, looking pale and wild, as was, perhaps, intelligible in the circumstances.
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