bathrobe, was sitting much at his ease, having just tumbled from the
tub. There was ever a recess in Richard's morning programme at this
point during which his breakfast arrived. Pending that repast, he had
thrown himself into an easy-chair before the blaze which crackled in the
deep fireplace. The sudden sharp weather made the fire pleasant enough.

The apartment in which Richard lounged, and the rooms to the rear
belonging with it, were richly appointed. A fortune had been spilled to
produce those effects in velvets and plushes and pictures and bronzes
and crystals and chinas and lamps and Russia leathers and laces and
brocades and silks, and as you walked the thick rugs you made no more
noise than a ghost. It was Richard's caprice to have his environment the
very lap of splendor, being as given to luxury as a woman.

Against the pane beat a swirl and white flurry of snow, for winter broke
early that year. Richard turned an eye of gray indolence on the window.
The down-come of snow in no sort disquieted him; there abode a bent for
winter in his blood, throughout the centuries Norse, that would have
liked a Laplander. Even his love for pictures ran away to scenes of snow
and wind-whipped wolds with drifts piled high. These, if well drawn, he
would look at; while he turned his back on palms and jungles and things
tropical in paint, the sight of which made him perspire like a harvest
hand. As Richard's idle glance came back from the window, it caught the
brown eyes of Mr. Pickwick considering him through a silvery, fringy
thicket of hair. Mr. Pickwick was said to be royally descended; however
that might have been, indubitably his pedigree harbored somewhere both a
door-mat and a mop.

"Rats!" observed Richard to Mr. Pickwick.