when asked, would laugh and shake his head:  this made the women very curious.  I believe they were chiefly preparations of the stomach, and other portions of the interior of the animal frame; but the doctor always said that it was his row of “secrets,” and used to amuse himself with evading the questions of the other sex.  There were some larger specimens of natural history suspended from the ceiling, chiefly skulls and bones of animals; and on the shelves inside a great variety of stones and pebbles and fragments of marble figures, which the doctor had picked up, I believe, in the Mediterranean:  altogether the shop was a strange medley, and made people stare very much when they came into it.  The doctor kept an old woman to cook and clean the house, and his boy Tom, whom I have already mentioned.  Tom was a good-natured lad, and, as his master said, very fond of liquorice; but the doctor used to laugh at that (when Tom was not by), saying, “It’s very true that Tom cribs my liquorice; but I will say this for him, he is very honest about jalap and rhubarb, and I have never missed a grain.”

Next door to the doctor lived another person, who kept a small tobacconist’s shop, which was a favorite resort of the pensioners and other poor people.  She was an Irishwoman, with a strong accent of her country—­a widow by her own account.  Who her husband had been was not satisfactorily known:  if the question was put, she always evaded it as much as possible.  All she said was that his name was St. Felix, and that he had been of no profession.  She was about twenty-two or twenty-three, very handsome, and very pleasing in her manners, which was perhaps one cause of the surmises and scandal which were continually afloat.  Some said that her husband was still alive; others that he had been transported for seven years; and many (and among them my mother) declared that she could not produce her “marriage lines.”  Indeed, there was no end to ill-natured reports, as always will be the case when men are so unfortunate as to have a reputation, or women so unfortunate as to be pretty.  But the widow appeared to be indifferent to what people said:  she was always lively and cheerful, and a great favorite with the men, whatever she may have been with the women.  Dr. Tadpole had courted her ever since she had settled at Greenwich:  they were the best of friends, but the doctor’s suit did not appear to advance.  Nevertheless, the doctor seldom passed a day without paying her a visit, and she was very gracious to him.  Although she sold every variety of tobacco, she would not permit people to smoke, and had no seats either in the shop or at the door—­but to this rule an exception was made in favor of the doctor.  He seldom failed to be there every evening; and, although she would not allow him a chair, she permitted him to remain standing at the counter and smoke his cigar while they conversed.  It was this indulgence which occasioned people to think that she would marry the doctor; but at last they got tired of waiting, and it became a sort of proverb in Fisher’s Alley and its precincts, when things were put off to an indefinite period, to say, “Yes, that will be done when the widow marries the doctor.”