"I'll spend a five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where
she lives!"

"THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!" said a little grave low voice,
all of a sudden, by his side." Pooh! what's money to you?"

Walker looked down: it was Tom Dale.

Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an
apple, and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock,
and always two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a
little brown frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he
went PAPPING down the street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody
met him every day, and he knew everything that everybody ever did;
though nobody ever knew what HE did. He was, they say, a hundred
years old, and had never dined at his own charge once in those
hundred years. He looked like a figure out of a waxwork, with
glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with a grin; he knew
what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and what
everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was the
receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street to
Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the
"notorieties" of the town, and the private histories of each. That
is, he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of
truth and memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the
most benevolent man in the universe, and never saw you without
telling you everything most cruel of your neighbour, and when he
left you he went to do the same kind turn by yourself.

"Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?" said little Tom Dale, who