“But, (dear me! ) she has a good stock—?”

“Dummies, sir, all dummies.”

“Dummies?”

“Yes, sir; the sugars on the shelves is all dummies—­wooden ’uns, done up in paper!  The herrin’ tub is on’y got a few at top—­the rest’s all shavins an’ waste.—­There’s plenty o’ salt to be sure—­but the werry soap-box is all made up.”

“And so’s my mind!” emphatically exclaimed the deluded Wiggins, slapping the breakfast-table with his clenched fist.

“Jim—­Jim—­you’re a honest lad, and there’s half-a-crown for you—­”

“Thank’ye for me, sir,” said the errand-boy, grinning with delight—­” and—­and you’ll cut the missus, Sir!”

“For ever!—­”

“Hooray!  I said as how I’d have my rewenge!” cried the lad, and pulling the front of his straight hair, as an apology for a bow, he retreated from the room.

“What an escape!” soliloquized Wiggins—­ “Should n’t I ha’ bin properly hampered? that’s all.  No more insinniwating widows for me!—­”

And so ended the Courtship of Mr. Wiggins.

SCENE XXII.

The Itinerant Musician.

A wandering son of Apollo, with a shocking bad hat, encircled by a melancholy piece of rusty crape, and arrayed in garments that had once shone with renovated splendour in that mart of second-hand habiliments ’ycleped Monmouth-street, was affrighting the echoes of a fashionable street by blowing upon an old clarionet, and doing the ‘Follow, hark!’ of Weber the most palpable injustice.

The red hand of the greasy cook tapped at the kitchen-window below, and she scolded inaudibly—­but he still continued to amuse—­himself, as regardless of the cook’s scolding as of the area-railing against which he leaned, tuning his discordant lay.

His strain indeed appeared endless, and he still persevered in torturing the ambient air with, apparently, as little prospect of blowing himself out as an asthmatic man would possibly have of extinguishing a smoky link with a wheeze—­or a hungry cadger without a penny!

The master of the mansion was suffering under a touch of the gout, accompanied by a gnawing tooth-ache!—­The horrid noise without made his trembling nerves jangle like the loose strings of an untuned guitar.

A furious tug at the bell brought down the silken rope and brought up an orbicular footman.

“William”

“Yes, sir.”

“D—–­ that, etc.! and send him to, etc.!”

“Yes, sir.”

And away glided the liveried rotundity.—­

Appearing at the street-door, the musician took his instrument from his lips, and, approaching the steps, touched his sorry beaver with the side of his left hand.

“There’s three-pence for you,” said the menial, “and master wishes you’d move on.”

“Threepence, indeed!” mumbled the man.  “I never moves on under sixpence:  d’ye think I doesn’t know the walley o’ peace and quietness?”