Ink bottle

It's a precious dark set of offices, and in the room where I sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and some cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up blue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.

"Ay, but a notary out of work, with his ink[-]bottle dry," said another bystander, very much out at elbows.

In the middle stood the two philanthropists they were in search of, freely bedaubed with tallow, one employed in boxing a boy's ears, the other in saving a huge inkbottle whereon some enterprising spirit had just laid hands by way of varying the rebel ammunition.