Miss Tattyboys has a carriage and a horse,
but for certain reasons upon which I briefly
touched in allusion to the parish engine, her
visits to the Rents are made perforce on foot,
Monday mornings, black Mondays emphatically,
are her ordinary visiting days; and on
such mornings you will see her dusky form
looming at Mr. Fazzle's door, or flitting
through the Rents as she is escorted to her
carriage by Barwise, her agent. Communications
may be made direct to her, but they
always come somehow through Barwise. He
may be described as the buffer to the Tattyboys
train; and run at her ever so hard,
Barwise receives the first collision, and
detracts from its force. If Gilks wants time,
or Chapford threatens to leave unless his
roof is looked to, or Mrs. Chownes asks
again about that kitchen range, or Spileberg
expresses a savage opinion that his house will
tumble in next week, and that there'll be
murder against somebody, Barwise interposes,
explains, promises, refuses, will see
about it. Which Barwise never does. You
try to get at Miss Tattyboys, but you can't,
though you are within hand and earshot of
her. The portentous black veil flutters in
the wind; you are dazzled and terrified by
her huge black reticule bursting with papers;
you strive to speak; but Miss Tattyboys is
gone, and all you can do is to throw yourself
upon Barwise, who throws you over.

The carriage of the landlady of the Rents
is an anomalous vehicle on very high springs,
of which the body seems decidedly never to
have been made for the wheels, which on
their part appear to be all of different sizes,
and shriek while moving dreadfully. Much
basket-work enters into the composition of
Miss Tattyboys's carriage, also much rusty
leather, and a considerable quantity of a
textile fabric resembling bed-ticking. There
are two lamps, one of which is quite blind and
glassless, and the other blinking and knocked
on one side in some bygone collision, to a
very squinting obliquity. A complication of
straps and rusty iron attaches this equipage
to a very long-bodied, short-legged black
horse, not unlike a turnspit dog, which
appears to be utterly disgusted with the whole
turnout, and drags it with an outstretched
head and outstretched legs, as though he
were a dog, and the carriage were a tin
kettle tied to his tail. There has been blood
and bone once about this horse doubtless;
but the blood is confined at present to a
perpetual raw on his shoulder, artfully veiled
irom the Society's constables by the rags of
his dilapidated collar, and the bone to a
lamentably anatomical development of his
ribs. To him is Jehu, a man of grim aspect
and of brickdust complexion, whose hat and
coat are as the hat and coat of a groom, but
whose legs are as the legs of an agricultural
labourer, inasmuch as they are clad in
corduroy, and terminate with heavy shoes,
much clayed. He amuses himself while
waiting for his mistress with aggravating the
long-bodied horse with his whip on his blind
side (he is wall-eyed) and with reading a
tattered volume, averred by many to be a
hymn-book, but declared by some to be a
Little Warbler, insomuch as smothered
refrains of " right tooral lol looral " have been
heard at times from his dreary coachbox. It
is not a pleasant sight this rusty carriage
with the long horse, and the grim coachman
jolting and staggering about Blitsom Street.
it does not do a man good to see the black
bonnet and veil inside, with the big reticule
and the papers, and overshadowed by
them all, as though a cypress had been
drawn over her, a poor little weazened
diminutive pale-faced little girl, in a bonnet
preposterously large for her, supposed to be
Miss Tattyboys's niece, also to be a
something in Chancery, and the " infant " about
whose " custody " there is such a fluster
every other term, the unhappy heiress of
thousands of disputed pounds.

I cannot finally dismiss Miss Tattyboys
without saying a word about Barwise, her
agent. Barwise as a correspondent is hated
and contemned, but Barwise as a man is
popular and respected. His letters are dreadful.
When Barwise says he will " write to
you," you are certain (failing payment) of
being sued. Barwise's first letters first begin,
"It is now some time since; " his second
missives commence with the awful words, '; Sir,
unless: " and after that, he is sure to be
"instructed by Miss Tattyboys," and to
sell you up. It is horrible to think that
Barwise not only collects Miss Tattyboys's
rents; but that he collects debts for
anybody in the neighbourhood, takes out
the abhorred "gridirons," or County Court
summonses, is an auctioneer, appraiser, valuer,
estate, house, and general agent. Dreadful
thought for Barwise to have a general agency
over you! Yet Barwise is not horribleto view,
being a sandy man of pleasant mien, in a long
brown coat. He is a capital agent, too, to
employ, if you want to get in any little
moneys that are due to you; and then it is
astonishing how you find yourself egging
Barwise on, and telling him to be firm, and not
to hear of delay. I think there is but
one sentiment that can surpass the indignation
a man feels at being forced to pay
anything he owes—and that is the indignation
with which he sets about forcing people to
pay, who owe him anything.

Barwise sings a good song, and the parlour
of the Cape of Good Hope nightly echoes to
his tuneful muse. I don't believe he ever went
farther seaward than Greenwich, but he
specially affects nautical ditties, and his
plaintive " Then farewell my trim-built
wherry," and "When my money was all
spent," have been found occasionally
exasperating to parties whose "sticks" he has
been instrumental in seizing the day before.
On festive occasions I have however heard