The first was that he himself
had been there for five-and-twenty years without suffering by it; and
the second was, that the defects of drainage were so radical that (the
place belonging to that period of house-building when the system of
drainage was often worse than none at all) half the premises, if not
half the street, would have to be pulled down for any effectual remedy.
So it was left as it was, and when Mr. Burton, the head clerk, had worse
headaches than usual, he used to give me sixpence for chloride of lime,
which I distributed at my discretion, and on those days Moses Benson
used generally to say that he "fancied he smelt something."
Moses Benson was an articled clerk to my uncle, but he had no
pretensions to be considered a gentleman. His father kept a small shop
where second-hand watches were the most obvious goods; but the old man
was said to have money, though the watches did not seem to sell very
fast, and his son had duly qualified for his post, and had paid a good
premium. Moses was only two or three years older than I, not that I
could have told anything about his age from his looks.
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