By and by perhaps.' Dudley was ushered into Mr.Inchling's room and introduced to the figure-head of the Firm of Inchling, Pennergate, and Radnor: a respectable City merchant indeed, whom Dudley could read-off in a glimpse of the downright contrast to his partner.

He had heard casual remarks on the respectable City of London merchant from Colney Durance.
A short analytical gaze at him, helped to an estimate of the powers of the man who kept him up.

Mr.Inchling was a florid City-feaster, descendant of a line of City merchants, having features for a wife to identify; as drovers, they tell us, can single one from another of their round-bellied beasts.

Formerly the leader of the Firm, he was now, after dreary fits of restiveness, kickings, false prophecies of ruin, Victor's obedient cart-horse.

He sighed in set terms for the old days of the Firm, when, like trouts in the current, the Firm had only to gape for shoals of good things to fatten it: a tale of English prosperity in quiescence; narrated interjectorily among the by-ways of the City, and wanting only metre to make it our national Poem.
Mr.Inchling did not deny that grand mangers of golden oats were still somehow constantly allotted to him.