Cannon Row, and said to the landlord behind the bar, "What is your very
best--the VERY _best_--ale a glass?" For the occasion was a festive
one, for some reasons: I forget why. It may have been my birthday, or
somebody else's. "Twopence," says he. "Then," says I, "just draw me a
glass of that, if you please, with a good head to it." The landlord
looked at me, in return, over the bar, from head to foot, with a
strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked
round the screen and said something to his wife, who came out from
behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me.
Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire
Terrace. The landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar
window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in
some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They
asked me a good many questions, as what my name was, how old I was,
where I lived, how I was employed, etc., etc. To all of which, that I
might commit nobody, I invented appropriate answers. They served me
with the ale, though I suspect it was not the strongest on the
premises; and the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door and
bending down, gave me a kiss that was half-admiring and
half-compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.


DELIVERANCE AT LAST

At last, one day, my father and the relative so often mentioned
quarrelled; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my father
to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very fiercely. It
was about me. It may have had some backward reference, in part, for
anything I know, to my employment at the window. All I am certain of
is that, soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin (he was a