"I'll remember you in my will.--My dear sir," he continued, addressing the surgeon, "do not look so serious. You cannot frighten me, I assure you. Life in its very best and palmiest state, with all its joys and pleasures unimpaired, is not so valuable a commodity in my eyes as to cost me two thoughts about losing it. There is no great chance of that, however, this time; and, even if there were, this old, crazy, worn-out body--of which, as of a house long in chancery, there is little more than the framework left--may just as well go down to mother earth to-day or to-morrow as after a few score more morrows, which will very soon be passed." The ball, however, was soon extracted; and the old gentleman retired to bed, treating the whole matter somewhat lightly. The next morning, when Charles Marston went to visit him, some degree of inflammation had naturally come on, rendering him rather irritable, of which he was conscious. "Go away, Charles! go away!" he said: "go and see your uncle, as you ought to have done before now. I am cross, and if you stay, you will find me as bitter as a black dose." "Well, I shall tell my servant, at all events, to be in readiness to attend upon you in case you ring," replied Charles Marston. "Tell him to go to the devil!" exclaimed Mr. Winkworth: "the whiskered coxcomb, with his airs and graces, would drive me mad in a minute. No, no; go away and see your uncle, and leave me to myself. You may come in about one or two o'clock; but mind how you open that door, for it makes such a villanous squeaking that one would suppose it had not moved on its hinges for half-a-century." There was a house which Charles Marston would undoubtedly have much preferred to visit, if he had followed his own inclination; but, nevertheless, with a strong resolution, he turned his steps towards his uncle's dwelling, feeling conscious that he had certainly made no great exertions to see him since his return. He was immediately admitted, for Mr. Scriven seldom betook himself to his counting-house before eleven or twelve o'clock; and being a man of very regular habits, the ordinary process was to read three or four articles in the morning papers before he set out, partly during breakfast, and partly during the first steps of digestion afterwards. I have said three or four articles, because in reading newspapers, as in everything else, Mr. Scriven went upon a system. He was one of those men who always have a motive, and his motive was usually one and indivisible. There was no such thing as an impulse in his nature; he did not recollect ever having had an impulse. He was Babbage's calculating machine, in flesh and blood.