now dead or scattered, with now a smile and now a sigh, and many an
"Ah me!" or "Dear, dear!"

This bent, worn man, coming towards us with quick impatient steps,
which yet cease every fifty yards or so, while he pauses, leaning
heavily upon his high Malacca cane: "It is a handsome face, is it
not?" I ask, as I gaze upon it, shadow framed.

"Aye, handsome enough," answers the old House; "and handsomer still it
must have been before you and I knew it, before mean care had furrowed
it with fretful lines."

"I never could make out," continues the old House, musingly, "whom you
took after; for they were a handsome pair, your father and your
mother, though Lord! what a couple of children!"

"Children!" I say in surprise, for my father must have been past five
and thirty before the House could have known him, and my mother's face
is very close to mine, in the darkness, so that I see the many grey
hairs mingling with the bonny brown.

"Children," repeats the old House, irritably, so it seems to me, not
liking, perhaps, its opinions questioned, a failing common to old
folk; "the most helpless pair of children I ever set eyes upon. Who
but a child, I should like to know, would have conceived the notion of
repairing his fortune by becoming a solicitor at thirty-eight, or,
having conceived such a notion, would have selected the outskirts of
Poplar as a likely centre in which to put up his door-plate?"

"It was considered to be a rising neighbourhood," I reply, a little