with the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the
matter to heart. He is trembling--you can see it in his dusty scalp.
He guides us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt
on that yellow door over there. Forward!

Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his
foot on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his
knife, and plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged
in sculpture.

"You never had your feet so white before," jeers Barque. "Rotting
apart," says Blaire, "you don't know where it is, that special van?"
He goes on to explain: "I've got to look up the dentist-van, so they
can grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that's
left. Oui, seems it's stationed here, the chop-caravan."

He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall,
possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones' new lease of life.

Once more we put up our beggars' petition: "Good-day, madame; you
haven't got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of
course, we would pay--"

Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old
man--like a fish in a bowl, it looks--a face curiously flat, and
lined with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.

"You've the little shed there."

"There's no room in the shed, and when the washing's done there--"