* * * * *

“A most interesting story, all through,” I said, as Jarber folded up the first of his series of discoveries in triumph.  “A story that goes straight to the heart—­especially at the end.  But”—­I stopped, and looked at Trottle.

Trottle entered his protest directly in the shape of a cough.

“Well!” I said, beginning to lose my patience.  “Don’t you see that I want you to speak, and that I don’t want you to cough?”

“Quite so, ma’am,” said Trottle, in a state of respectful obstinacy which would have upset the temper of a saint.  “Relative, I presume, to this story, ma’am?”

“Yes, Yes!” said Jarber.  “By all means let us hear what this good man has to say.”

“Well, sir,” answered Trottle, “I want to know why the House over the way doesn’t let, and I don’t exactly see how your story answers the question.  That’s all I have to say, sir.”

I should have liked to contradict my opinionated servant, at that moment.  But, excellent as the story was in itself, I felt that he had hit on the weak point, so far as Jarber’s particular purpose in reading it was concerned.

“And that is what you have to say, is it?” repeated Jarber.  “I enter this room announcing that I have a series of discoveries, and you jump instantly to the conclusion that the first of the series exhausts my resources.  Have I your permission, dear lady, to enlighten this obtuse person, if possible, by reading Number Two?”

“My work is behindhand, ma’am,” said Trottle, moving to the door, the moment I gave Jarber leave to go on.

“Stop where you are,” I said, in my most peremptory manner, “and give Mr. Jarber his fair opportunity of answering your objection now you have made it.”

Trottle sat down with the look of a martyr, and Jarber began to read with his back turned on the enemy more decidedly than ever.

GOING INTO SOCIETY

At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a Showman.  He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name.  But, he himself was less easy to be found; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of him.  At last, among the marsh lands near the river’s level, that lie about Deptford and the neighbouring market-gardens, a Grizzled Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels.  The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man.  In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a companionable manner.