“Be Jasus! and it’s yourself, Frank, that ogles all the lasses that we mate,” cried the captain, throwing back an insinuation that was intended as a friendly compliment. “But which is the place, me boy?” “Here,” said Curtis, turning into a public-house in Fleet Street just as the clock struck three. CHAPTER CXXIII. A MAN OF BUSINESS. Mr. Bubbleton Styles was a gentleman of about fifty years of age. Short, thin, dapper, and active,--with a high, bald forehead, and small restless, twinging eyes,--he seemed a perfect man of business--an impression that was enhanced by a certain sly knowingness which he had assumed years before, and which was now habitual to him. He was uneducated and ignorant: but he had studied the manner in which well-instructed persons spoke--he compared their language with his own--and he had actually weeded his style of speech of the solecisms and grammatical errors that originally characterised it. He had not, however, been able to improve himself in spelling, with equal facility; and therefore he took care never to write a letter. He always had some plausible excuse for throwing this duty in business matters upon some other person more competent than himself. Astute and cunning, he forebore from touching on topics which he did not understand: but if the conversation did turn, in spite of his endeavours to the contrary, on subjects whereof he was ignorant, he so artfully managed his observations that even those who knew him well were far from suspecting that he was otherwise than profoundly acquainted with the matter under discussion. Every body thought him a very shrewd fellow;--and he had a habit of looking so knowing and critical when any one was speaking, that his opinion, when subsequently delivered, was received with respect and deemed an authority. The reader may therefore perceive that Mr. Bubbleton Styles was a thorough man of the world. He took care never to commit himself. In small money transactions he was always regular and correct: he therefore escaped the imputation of meanness, and actually acquired at a cheap rate the denomination of “an honourable character.” The consequence was, that when he failed--which was very often indeed--in large transactions, he was considered merely as “a spirited but unsuccessful speculator,”--never as a dishonest person.