Nor was Mr. Weller's pride satisfied with
even this display, for when he took his leave he carried the child,
like some rare and astonishing curiosity, first to the barber's
house and afterwards to the tobacconist's, at each of which places
he repeated his performances with the utmost effect to applauding
and delighted audiences. It was half-past nine o'clock when Mr.
Weller was last seen carrying him home upon his shoulder, and it
has been whispered abroad that at that time the infant Tony was
rather intoxicated.
I was musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents
with which I had been so long engaged; wondering how I could ever
have looked forward with pleasure to the completion of my tale, and
reproaching myself for having done so, as if it were a kind of
cruelty to those companions of my solitude whom I had now
dismissed, and could never again recall; when my clock struck ten.
Punctual to the hour, my friends appeared.
On our last night of meeting, we had finished the story which the
reader has just concluded. Our conversation took the same current
as the meditations which the entrance of my friends had
interrupted, and The Old Curiosity Shop was the staple of our
discourse.
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