Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention-it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse-but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after.
Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely.
When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.
They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him.
Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson's-never by any means in it, unless called in-was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house.
He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image.
People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man.
The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post.