the driver to right himself at his leisure.

[Footnote 14: Doing a bit of resurrection work.]

Ballenger looked rather queer when he heard they were going to Nosey
Browne's, for it so happened that Nosey had managed to walk into his
books for groceries and kitchen-stuff to the tune of fourteen pounds, a
large sum to a man in a small way of business; and to be entertaining
friends so soon after his composition, seemed curious to Ballenger's
uninitiated suburban mind.

Crossing Streatham Common, a short turn to the left by some yew-trees
leads, by a near cut across the fields, to Browne's house; a fiery-red
brick castellated cottage, standing on the slope of a gentle eminence,
and combining almost every absurdity a cockney imagination can be
capable of. Nosey, who was his own "Nash," set out with the intention of
making it a castle and nothing but a castle, and accordingly the windows
were made in the loophole fashion, and the door occupied a third of the
whole frontage. The inconveniences of the arrangements were soon felt,
for while the light was almost excluded from the rooms, "rude Boreas"
had the complete run of the castle whenever the door was opened. To
remedy this, Nosey increased the one and curtailed the other, and the
Gothic oak-painted windows and door flew from their positions to make
way for modern plate-glass in rich pea-green casements, and a door of
similar hue. The battlements, however, remained, and two wooden guns
guarded a brace of chimney-pots and commanded the wings of the castle,
one whereof was formed into a green-, the other into a gig-house.

The peals of a bright brass-handled bell at a garden-gate, surmounted by
a holly-bush with the top cut into the shape of a fox, announced their