less popular than the girls that it is bare of
visitors when she looks in at the doorway.

But just within the doorway, chances to
stand, inspecting, an elderly female attendant:
some order of matron or housekeeper. To whom
the lady addresses natural questions: As, how
many boys? At what age are they usually put
out in life? Do they often take a fancy to the
sea? So, lower and lower in tone until the
lady put the question: "Which is Walter
Wilding?"

Attendant's head shaken. Against the rules.
"You know which is Walter Wilding?"

So keenly does the attendant feel the closeness
with which the lady's eyes examine her face, that
she keeps her own eyes fast upon the floor, lest
by wandering in the right direction they should
betray her.

"I know which is Walter Wilding, but it
is not my place, ma'am, to tell names to
visitors."

"But you can show me without telling me."

The lady's hand moves quietly to the
attendant's hand. Pause and silence.

"I am going to pass round the tables," says
the lady's interlocutor, without seeming to
address her." Follow me with your eyes.
The boy that I stop at and speak to, will not
matter to you. But the boy that I touch, will
be Walter Wilding. Say nothing more to me,
and move a little away."

Quickly acting on the hint, the lady passes on
into the room, arid looks about her. After a
few moments, the attendant, in a staid, official
way, walks down outside the line of tables
commencing on her left hand. She goes the whole
length of the line, turns, and comes back on the
inside. Very slightly glancing in the lady's
direction, she stops, bends forward, and speaks.
The boy whom she addresses, lifts his head and
replies. Good humouredly and easily, as she
listens to what he says, she lays her hand
upon the shoulder of the next boy on his right.
That the action may be well noted, she keeps
her hand on the shoulder while speaking in
return, and pats it twice or thrice before moving
away. She completes her tour of the tables,
touching no one else, and passes out by a door
at the opposite end of the long room.

Dinner is done, and the lady, too, walks down
outside the line of tables commencing on her left
hand, goes the whole length of the line, turns,
and comes back on the inside. Other people
have strolled in, fortunately for her, and stand
sprinkled about. She lifts her veil, and, stopping
at the touched boy, asks how old he is?

"I am twelve, ma'am," he answers, with his
bright eyes fixed on hers.

"Are you well and happy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"May you take these sweetmeats from my
hand?"

"If you please to give them to me."

In stooping low for the purpose, the lady
touches the boy's face with her forehead and
with her hair. Then, lowering her veil again,
she passes on, and passes out without looking
back.

ACT I.

THE CURTAIN RISES.

In a court-yard in the City of London, which
was No Thoroughfare either for vehicles or
foot-passengers; a court-yard diverging from
a steep, a slippery, and a winding street
connecting Tower-street with the Middlesex
shore of the Thames; stood the place of
business of Wilding and Co. Wine Merchants.
Probably, as a jocose acknowledgment of the
obstructive character of this main approach,
the point nearest to its base at which one could
take the river (if so inodorously minded) bore
the appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The
court-yard itself had likewise been descriptively
entitled in old time, Cripple Corner.

Years before the year one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one, people had left off taking
boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen had
ceased to ply there. The slimy little causeway
had dropped into the river by a slow process of
suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and
a rusty iron mooring-ring were all that remained
of the departed Break-Neck glories. Sometimes,
indeed, a laden coal barge would bump
itself into the place, and certain laborious heavers,
seemingly mud-engendered, would arise, deliver
the cargo in the neighbourhood, shove off, and
vanish; but at most times the only commerce
of Break-Neck-Stairs arose out of the
conveyance of casks and bottles, both full and empty,
both to and from the cellars of Wilding and Co.
Wine Merchants. Even that commerce was
but occasional, and through three-fourths of
its rising tides the dirty indecorous drab of a
river would come solitarily oozing and lapping
at the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the Doge
and the Adriatic, and wanted to be married to
the great conserver of its filthiness, the Right
Honourable the Lord Mayor.

Some two hundred and fifty yards on the
right, up the opposite hill (approaching it from
the low ground of Break-Neck-Stairs) was
Cripple Corner. There was a pump in Cripple
Corner, there was a tree in Cripple Corner. All
Cripple Corner belonged to Wilding and Co.
Wine Merchants. Their cellars burrowed under
it, their mansion towered over it. It really
had been a mansion in the days when merchants
inhabited the City, and had a ceremonious
shelter to the doorway without visible support,
like the sounding-board over an old pulpit. It
had also a number of long narrow strips of
window, so disposed in its grave brick front as
to render it symmetrically ugly. It had also on
its roof, a cupola with a bell in it.

"When a man at five-and-twenty can put his
hat on, and can say 'this hat covers the owner
of this property and of the business which is
transacted on this property,' I consider, Mr.
Bintrey, that, without being boastful, he may be
allowed to be deeply thankful. I don't know
how it may appear to you, but so it appears to
me."

Thus Mr. Walter Wilding to his man of law,
in his own counting-house; taking his hat down
from its peg to suit the action to the word, and