girl--and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had
made her--and, mark! hasn't asked her a single ques tion, and, instead
of annoying her, has made her happy in the performance of a charitable
action. Stop a bit! I haven't done with you yet. Who blacks your boots
and shoes? Look here!" He pushed his pug-dog off his lap, dived under
the table, appeared again with an old boot and a bottle of blackening,
and set to work with tigerish activity. "I'm going out for a walk, you
know, and I may as well make myself smart." With that announcement, he
began to sing over his work--a song of sentiment, popular in England in
the early part of the present century--"She's all my fancy painted her;
she's lovely, she's divine; but her heart it is another's; and it never
can be mine! Too-ral-loo-ral-loo'. I like a love-song. Brush away! brush
away! till I see my own pretty face in the blacking. Hey! Here's a nice,
harmless, jolly old man! sings and jokes over his work, and makes the
kitchen quite cheerful. What's that you say? He's a stranger, and don't
talk to him too freely. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak in
that way of a poor old fellow with one foot in the grave. Mrs. Cook will
give him a nice bit of dinner in the scullery; and John Footman will
look out an old coat for him. And when he's heard everything he wants to
hear, and doesn't come back again the next day to his work--what do they
think of it in the servants' hall? Do they say, 'We've had a spy among
us!' Yah! you know better than that, by this time. The cheerful old
man has been run over in the street, or is down with the fever, or has
turned up his toes in the parish dead-house--that's what they say in
the servants' hall. Try me in your own kitchen, and see if your servants
take me for a spy. Come, come, Mr. Lawyer! out with your ten pounds, and
don't waste any more precious time about it!"

"I will consider and let you know," said Mr. Troy.