It was no time, just then—­with the cheerful old woman’s eye searching him all over, and the cheerful old woman’s tongue talking at him, nineteen to the dozen—­for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small matters that had got into wrong corners of it.  He put by in his mind that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin’s face, to be taken up again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him in prime order for present necessities.

“You wouldn’t like to go down into the kitchen, would you?” says the witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle’s mother, instead of Benjamin’s.  “There’s a bit of fire in the grate, and the sink in the back kitchen don’t smell to matter much to-day, and it’s uncommon chilly up here when a person’s flesh don’t hardly cover a person’s bones.  But you don’t look cold, sir, do you?  And then, why, Lord bless my soul, our little bit of business is so very, very little, it’s hardly worth while to go downstairs about it, after all.  Quite a game at business, ain’t it, sir?  Give-and-take that’s what I call it—­give-and-take!”

With that, her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about Trottle’s waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son, holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm with the knuckles of the other.  Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it out charitably for the benefit of Trottle.

“I say!” says Benjamin, settling himself against the wall and nodding his head viciously at his cheerful old mother.  “I say!  Look out.  She’ll skin you!”

Assisted by these signs and warnings, Trottle found no difficulty in understanding that the business referred to was the giving and taking of money, and that he was expected to be the giver.  It was at this stage of the proceedings that he first felt decidedly uncomfortable, and more than half inclined to wish he was on the street-side of the house-door again.

He was still cudgelling his brains for an excuse to save his pocket, when the silence was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the upper part of the house.

It was not at all loud—­it was a quiet, still, scraping sound—­so faint that it could hardly have reached the quickest ears, except in an empty house.

“Do you hear that, Benjamin?” says the old woman.  “He’s at it again, even in the dark, ain’t he?  P’raps you’d like to see him, sir!” says she, turning on Trottle, and poking her grinning face close to him.  “Only name it; only say if you’d like to see him before we do our little bit of business—­and I’ll show good Forley’s friend up-stairs, just as if he was good Mr. Forley himself. My legs are all right, whatever Benjamin’s may be.  I get younger and younger, and stronger and stronger, and jollier and jollier, every day—­that’s what I do!  Don’t mind the stairs on my account, sir, if you’d like to see him.”