The Chicken hailed a hackney-coach
and they drove away to the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, which is a centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of sight. Alighting there, they arrive, by a court and a long whitewashed passage, at a great brick building composed of bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights; on the front of which, if it can be said to have a front, is painted GEORGE'S SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.
The door to this establishment being closed, the Chicken pulled a bell-handle,
which hung by a chain to the door-post, and the door was opened by a very
singular-looking little man dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize apron and cap, whose face, and
hands, and dress, were blackened all over with gunpowder, and begrimed with the loading of guns. By their manner of greeting, which
involved an extended bout of playful sparring, Mr. Headstone surmised that the
two gentlemen were on such familiar terms that they precluded the more
commonplace formalities of acquaintance. He followed them down a dreary passage
into a large building with bare brick walls; where there were targets, and
guns, and swords, and other paraphernalia of the sporting variety. This
assortment of weaponry inspired the combatants to further demonstrations of
sportsmanship, which exhibited itself at first in a duel with foils, and then
in a display of marksmanship involving pistols and rifles, and clay pipes for
targets. Mr. Headstone found it indispensable for his own sense of comfort and
personal safety to take up a position in a corner of the room behind a screen
of unpainted wood, and resolved not to emerge from this place until the echo of
the last report had died down.
