myself out, you know. I don't find myself in
spirits in this sort of way often."

"Oh, then we must stay," said Lucy, eagerly.
"What harm? Poor Harco," she whispered
to Vivian, "his heart is set on it."

They did stay. So the pleasant day went
by, the excitable Mr. Dacres overflowing with
spirits. By-and-by he stopped to speak to Lucy,
drawing her aside with mystery.

"I say, Lulu love, was that West cruising
about here? You did not meet him?"

"No, dear."

"Because I'd have sworn I saw his
hangdog face looking out from behind a bush, like a
Sambo in a jungle. But he was gone when I
looked again. Maybe it was imagination—the
baseless fabric of a vision."

Vivian turned quickly.

"He is not come to that, I hope," he said,
angrily. "He is not turned spy, surely?"

THE BUTCHER

From the cattle market to the butcher's shop
is only a step, but it costs a good deal,
especially to the West-end customer. The model
butcher's shop is situated in some great
thoroughfare. It commands not only a first-
rate list of customers, whose red books pass
through the hands of butchers, housekeepers,
or professed cooks, but also a lively ready-
money "cutting business," when the lamps are
lighted, and the thrifty wives of clerks and
working-men walk out, basket in hand and
money in purse, to make a personal inspection
of the dead meat shows, intent on getting
bargains. Such a butcher carefully studies the
tastes of all classes of customers, and provides
for quantity as well as quality. He expects his
journeyman to have swept the boards and hooks
pretty clean when the late closing movement
takes place on a Saturday night. The clever
journeyman butcher is not second to his genteel
but more effeminate rival, the haberdasher, in
his powers of persuasion; indeed, next to a
knowledge of buying, the journeyman, who is
to rise into a master, more needs the voluble
art of selling bargains.

Our model butcher commences his week's
work at four or five o'clock on every Monday
morning. Accompanied by his lad, he drives to
the metropolitan market, to lay in the principal
stock for the week. We will presume that the
time of the year is the early winter, when cold
weather has driven his best customers home
from the sea-side, the Highlands, or the
Continent, and there is no longer, as in summer,
daily fear that a change in the weather may
destroy the whole stock of the shop in a single
night—a serious item in a butcher's trade
expenses—so he may buy bravely.

His first steps are bent to the part of the
market where, on an average throughout the
year, five thousand cattle of one kind or
another, from the primest Scot or Devon oxen to
the poorest Prussian cow, or the leanest Polish
harness-bullock, are ranged for his inspection
most conveniently in regular lanes, on, perhaps,
the bleakest, coldest spot that could have been
selected in the whole metropolis. On this bleak
hill, in the course of a year, over eighteen
millions sterling pass from the butchers to
the salesmen in the purchase of cattle, sheep,
calves, and pigs.

In winter the supply comes from the yards and
stalls of Scotland, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and
all the counties where roots are well cultivated,
and farmers have capital to buy cake. The
foreigners, before the cattle plague, often
provided half the supply. The best came in
summer from Holstein (called Tonnings, from
the port of shipment), and from dairy-feeding
Normandy, and the grass districts of Brittany,
these being Short-horn crosses, and standing
next in value to the Scots. But, in winter, the
importation of grass-fed beasts, either from our
own pasture counties or the Continent, ceases;
the supply is kept up by cattle under shelter, fed
on dry food and roots. These include the produce
of the best farms in England and Scotland, and
poor lean cattle of the Continent, drafts from,
harness and the dairy, called in the trade
Prussians, but coming from districts as widely apart
as Mecklenburg and Magdeburg!

Before the Cattle Plague Commission, a
German salesman, who does one of the
largest trades in the market, said: "I had
cattle from Galicia, which were twelve days
coming. I sold fifty for twenty-five pounds
apiece to two persons at Bristol, who came
for pure white beasts, for they said 'they
are as fat as any we have ever seen.' " This
gentleman imported four hundred beasts a
week, and about two thousand sheep. The
Hungarian cattle came chiefly by way of
Bavaria to Mayence and up the Rhine; the
Podolian and Galician by rail to Hamburg.

Our butcher will first select the beef for his
best customers—his red-book customers. So
many smallish, well-fed—not too young— that,
when killed, will all be called Scotch beef,
although the lot may include some Devons and
even first-class Welsh. He will then pick out
some large beasts—Short-horns or Herefords,
or, more likely, Short-horn crosses of Polled
Scots. The Polled Scot is very prime beef, and
large, too. In our fathers' times, he was a wild,
rough, rather long-legged customer, seldom
killed before five years old. Care, selection,
stall-feeding, and some suspected crosses, have
made him, at two years old, plump, sleek, fine-
boned, and still capital beef. These, in trade
terms, "die well," and are the butcher's favourites,
for there is more profit to be made out of
the huge joints, although the quality and the
nominal price may fall below the older and
smaller beasts. Finally, to accommodate all
pockets, he may invest in one or two low-priced
foreigners, for the "cutting butcher" does not
forget that when he sells a joint, "bone is paid
for at the price of meat."

The beasts bargained for and bought, the
purchaser marks them with his private mark, and