not worth speaking about; and it appeared evident to Paul that something
unpleasant to the man of rags, which was not shared by the unconscious
Pepper, lurked in the reminiscence of their past acquaintance. How beit,
the circumstance glided from Paul's attention the moment afterwards; and
he paid, we are concerned to say, equally little heed to the cautions
against Ned with which Dummie regaled him.

Perhaps (for we must now direct a glance towards his domestic concerns)
one great cause which drove Paul to Fish Lane was the uncomfortable life
he led at home. For though Mrs. Lobkins was extremely fond of her
_protege_, yet she was possessed, as her customers emphatically remarked,
"of the devil's own temper;" and her native coarseness never having been
softened by those pictures of gay society which had, in many a novel and
comic farce, refined the temperament of the romantic Paul, her manner of
venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to a
lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred to him to
leave her house altogether, and seek his fortunes alone, after the manner
of the ingenious Gil Blas or the enterprising Roderick Random; and this
idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and increased
at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the stomach of
some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects of
enterprise the reader will hereafter notice that an early vision of the
Green Forest Cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend, a ham,
and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this time he
did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the hero of
the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the notion of
the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero's life was now, however, about to be
diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood to