company to him; and when he heard their voices, he had an interest
in glancing at their lodging-place, and thinking how they were
moved, and what hammers beat upon them. Perhaps he was the more
curious about these Bells, because there were points of resemblance
between themselves and him. They hung there, in all weathers, with
the wind and rain driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of
all those houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires
that gleamed and shone upon the windows, or came puffing out of the
chimney tops; and incapable of participation in any of the good
things that were constantly being handled, through the street doors
and the area railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and went at
many windows: sometimes pretty faces, youthful faces, pleasant
faces: sometimes the reverse: but Toby knew no more (though he
often speculated on these trifles, standing idle in the streets)
whence they came, or where they went, or whether, when the lips
moved, one kind word was said of him in all the year, than did the
Chimes themselves.

Toby was not a casuist--that he knew of, at least--and I don't mean
to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his
first rough acquaintance with them into something of a closer and
more delicate woof, he passed through these considerations one by
one, or held any formal review or great field-day in his thoughts.
But what I mean to say, and do say is, that as the functions of
Toby's body, his digestive organs for example, did of their own
cunning, and by a great many operations of which he was altogether
ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have astonished him very
much, arrive at a certain end; so his mental faculties, without his
privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in motion,
with a thousand others, when they worked to bring about his liking