for his own gathering might but be gaudy wax-work after all, or
painted stone, perhaps, cold, smooth, and beautiful, against which he
should rasp his teeth in vain.

The well-tutored Puckers, dressed in faded splendour, and holding a
brown-paper parcel in her hand, was waiting for her young lady at the
corner of the Square.

While thus engaged she witnessed a bargain, of an unusual nature, made
apparently under extraordinary pressure of circumstances. A ragged
boy, established at the crossing, who had indeed rendered himself
conspicuous by his endeavours to ferry Puckers over dry-shod, was
accosted by a shabby-genteel and remarkably good-looking man in the
following vernacular--

"On this minnit, off at six, Buster; two bob an' a bender, and a three
of eye-water, in?"

"Done for another joey," replied Buster, with the premature acuteness
of youth foraging for itself in the streets of London.

"Done," repeated the man, pulling a handful of silver from his pocket,
and assuming the broom at once to enter on his professional labours,
ere Puckers had recovered from her astonishment, or Buster could
vanish round the corner in the direction of a neighbouring mews.

Though plying his instrument diligently, the man kept a sharp eye on
the Square gardens. When Tom Ryfe emerged through the heavy iron gate
he whispered a deep and horrible curse, but his dark eyes shone and
his whole face beamed into a ruffianly kind of beauty, when after a