In those days people often depended upon the caprices of hawkers
for the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age,
when errant knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising.
You went on to your doorstep, caught your meal as it passed,
withdrew, cooked it and ate it, quite in the manner of the early
Briton.

Constance was obliged to join her sister on the top step. Sophia
descended to the second step.

"Fresh mussels and cockles all alive oh!" bawled the hawker,
looking across the road in the April breeze. He was the celebrated
Hollins, a professional Irish drunkard, aged in iniquity, who
cheerfully saluted magistrates in the street, and referred to the
workhouse, which he occasionally visited, as the Bastile.

Sophia was trembling from head to foot.

"What ARE you laughing at, you silly thing?" Constance demanded.

Sophia surreptitiously showed the pliers, which she had partly
thrust into her pocket. Between their points was a most
perceptible, and even recognizable, fragment of Mr. Povey.

This was the crown of Sophia's career as a perpetrator of the
unutterable.

"What!" Constance's face showed the final contortions of that
horrified incredulity which is forced to believe.