at him very hard.

'Tom didn't know what could be passing in this old gentleman's
mind. He thought it likely enough that he might be saying within
himself, "Here's a new lamplighter - a good-looking young fellow -
shall I stand something to drink?" Thinking this possible, he
keeps quite still, pretending to be very particular about the wick,
and looks at the old gentleman sideways, seeming to take no notice
of him.

'Gentlemen, he was one of the strangest and most mysterious-looking
files that ever Tom clapped his eyes on. He was dressed all
slovenly and untidy, in a great gown of a kind of bed-furniture
pattern, with a cap of the same on his head; and a long old flapped
waistcoat; with no braces, no strings, very few buttons - in short,
with hardly any of those artificial contrivances that hold society
together. Tom knew by these signs, and by his not being shaved,
and by his not being over-clean, and by a sort of wisdom not quite
awake, in his face, that he was a scientific old gentleman. He
often told me that if he could have conceived the possibility of
the whole Royal Society being boiled down into one man, he should
have said the old gentleman's body was that Body.

'The old gentleman claps the telescope to his eye, looks all round,
sees nobody else in sight, stares at Tom again, and cries out very
loud:

'"Hal-loa!"

'"Halloa, Sir," says Tom from the ladder; "and halloa again, if you