With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot.  Then, getting up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, “What do you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?” he began to untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a minute.  Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he says, “I say, look here,” and ducks under the clothes, head first, worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster.  This over-sized head-gear of the child’s had so shoved itself down in the course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his mouth.  He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his eyebrows—­looked at Trottle—­said, “Snug, ain’t it?  Good-bye!”—­popped his face under the clothes again—­and left nothing to be seen of him but the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the middle of the bolster.

“What a young limb it is, ain’t it?” says Benjamin’s mother, giving Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow.  “Come on! you won’t see no more of him to-night!”

“And so I tell you!” sings out a shrill, little voice under the bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old woman’s last words.

If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret prison, bed-clothes and all.  As it was, he put a strong check on himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjamin’s mother to lead him down-stairs again.

“Mind them top bannisters,” says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them.  “They are as rotten as medlars every one of ’em.”

“When people come to see the premises,” says Trottle, trying to feel his way a little farther into the mystery of the House, “you don’t bring many of them up here, do you?”

“Bless your heart alive!” says she, “nobody ever comes now.  The outside of the house is quite enough to warn them off.  Mores the pity, as I say.  It used to keep me in spirits, staggering ’em all, one after another, with the frightful high rent—­specially the women, drat ’em.  ’What’s the rent of this house?’—­’Hundred and twenty pound a-year!’—­’Hundred and twenty? why, there ain’t a house in the street as lets for more than eighty!’—­Likely enough, ma’am; other landlords may lower their rents if they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to have as much for his house as his father had before him!’—­’But the neighbourhood’s gone off since then!’—­’Hundred and twenty pound, ma’am.’—­’The landlord must be mad!’—­’Hundred and twenty pound, ma’am.’—­’Open the door you impertinent woman!’ Lord! what a happiness it was to see ’em bounce out, with that awful rent a-ringing in their ears all down the street!”