Chapter 22: V

V Mercury Prompting Fledgeby deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was the meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two. The father of this young gentleman had been a moneylender, who had transacted professional business with the mother of this young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast da…