out a good long breath, and set his little red
arms akimbo, and nodded at Trottle.

"There!" says the child, knitting his
little downy eyebrows into a frown. " Drat
the dirt! I've cleaned up. Where's my
beer?"

Benjamin's mother chuckled till Trottle
thought she would have choked herself.

"Lord ha' mercy on us! " says she, "just
hear the imp. You would never think he
was only five years old, would you, sir?
Please to tell good Mr. Forley you saw
him going on as nicely as ever, playing
at being me scouring the parlour floor, and
calling for my beer afterwards. That's his
regular game, morning, noon, and night—
he's never tired of it. Only look how snug
we've been and dressed him. That's my
shawl a keepin his precious little body
warm, and Benjamin's nightcap a keepin his;
precious little head warm, and Benjamin's
stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a keepin
his precious little legs warm. He's snug and
happy if ever a imp was yet. 'Where's my
beer! '—say it again, little dear, say it again!"

If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light
and a fire in the room, clothed like other
children, and playing naturally with a top, or
a box of soldiers, or a bouncing big
india-rubber ball, he might have been as cheerful
under the circumstances as Benjamin's mother
herself. But seeing the child reduced (as he
could not help suspecting) for want of proper
toys and proper child's company, to take up
with the mocking of an old woman at her
scouring-work for something to stand in the
place of a game, Trottle, though not a
family man, nevertheless felt the sight before
him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and
the most pitiable that he had ever witnessed.

"Why, my man," says he, "you're the
boldest little chap in all England. You don't
seem a bit afraid of being up here all by
yourself in the dark."

"The big winder," says the child, pointing
up to it, " sees in the dark; and I see with
the big winder." He stops a bit, and gets
up on his legs, and looks hard at Benjamin's
mother. " I'm a good 'un," says he, "ain't
I? I save candle."

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn
little creature had been brought up to do
without, besides candlelight; and risked
putting a question as to whether he ever got
a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit.
O, yes, he had a run now and then, out of
doors (to say nothing of his runs about the
house), the lively little cricket—a run according
to good Mr. Forley's instructions, which
were followed out carefully, as good Mr.
Forley's friend would be glad to hear, to the
very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply
to this, namely, that good Mr. Forley's
instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions
of an infernal scamp; and as he felt
that such an answer would naturally prove
the death-blow to all further discoveries on
his part, he gulped down his feelings before
they got too many for him, and held his
tongue, and looked round towards the window
again to see what the forlorn little boy was
going to amuse himself with next.

The child had gathered up his blacking
brush and bit of rag, and had put them into
the old tin saucepan; and was now working
his way, as well as his clothes would let him,
with his rnake-believe pail hugged up in his
arms, towards a door of communication which
led from the back to the front garret.

"I say," says he, looking round sharply
over his shoulder, " what are you two stopping
here for! I'm going to bed now—and so I
tell you!"

With that, he opened the door, and walked
into the front room. Seeing Trottle take a
step or two to follow him, Benjamin's mother
opened her wicked old eyes in a state of great
astonishment.

"Mercy on us! " says she, "haven't you
seen enough of him yet?"

"No," says Trottle. "I should like to see
him go to bed."

Benjamin's mother burst into such a fit of
chuckling that the loose extinguisher in the
candlestick clattered again with the shaking
of her hand. To think of good Mr. Forley's
friend taking ten times more trouble about
the imp than good Mr. Forley himself!
Such a joke as that, Benjamin's mother
had not often met with in the course of
her life, and she begged to be excused if she
took the liberty of having a laugh at it.

Leaving her to laugh as much as she
pleased, and coming to a pretty positive
conclusion, after what he had just heard, that
Mr. Forley's interest in the child was not of
the fondest possible kind, Trottle walked into
the front room, and Benjamin's mother,
enjoying herself immensely, followed with the
candle.

There were two pieces of furniture in the
front garret. One, an old stool of the sort
that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and
the other a great big ricketty straddling old
truckle bedstead. In the middle of this
bed-stead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of
sacking, was a kind of little island of poor
bedding—an old bolster, with nearly all the
feathers out of it, doubled in three for a
pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counterpane,
and a blanket; and under that, and
peeping out a little on either side beyond the
loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of
horsehair, laid along together for a sort of
makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into
the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled
up on the bedstead with the help of the
beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of
sacking with the shred of counterpane in his
hands, just making ready to tuck it in for
himself under the chair cushions.

"I'll tuck you up, my man," says Trottle.
"Jump into bed, and let me try."