What may be called its private life was confined to the hearth, and all easy-chair, and an old-fashioned occasional round table that was brought out upon the rug after business hours, from a corner where it elsewise remained turned up like a shining mahogany shield.

Behind it, when standing thus on the defensive, was a closet, usually containing something good to drink.

An outer room was the clerk's room; Mr.Grewgious's sleeping-room was across the common stair; and he held some not empty cellarage at the bottom of the common stair.

Three hundred days in the year, at least, he crossed over to the hotel in Furnival's Inn for his dinner, and after dinner crossed back again, to make the most of these simplicities until it should become broad business day once more, with P.J.T., date seventeen-forty-seven.
As Mr.Grewgious sat and wrote by his fire that afternoon, so did the clerk of Mr.Grewgious sit and write by _his_ fire.

A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion, that seemed to ask to be sent to the baker's, this attendant was a mysterious being, possessed of some strange power over Mr.Grewgious.