And for his (Nippers') part, this was the first and the last
time he would do another man's business without pay.
Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but
his own peculiar business there.
Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy
work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly.
I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any
where. As yet I had never of my personal knowledge known him to be
outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At
about eleven o'clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut
would advance toward the opening in Bartleby's screen, as if silently
beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy
would then leave the office jingling a few pence, and reappear with a
handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving
two of the cakes for his trouble.
He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
speaking; he must be a vegetarian then; but no; he never eats even
vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts.
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