“The proper study of mankind is man.”

Although quick in temper, and rude in speech and manners, Timmis was kind; and, if he had a failing, it was the ambition of being a patron; and he was certainly not one of those who do a good deed, and

“Blush to find it fame.”

He not only employed my father to make his boots, but recommended him to all his friends as a “good-fit,” and procured the old man some excellent customers.  Among his acquaintance, for he had few friends, was Tom Wallis, a fat, facetious man, about forty, with whom he was always lunching and cracking his jokes.  One day, when the stocks were “shut” and business was slack, they started together on a sporting excursion towards the romantic region of Hornsey-wood, on which occasion I had the honour of carrying a well-filled basket of provisions, and the inward satisfaction of making a good dinner from the remnants.

They killed nothing but time, yet they were exceedingly merry, especially during the discussion of the provisions.  Their laughter, indeed, was enough to scare all the birds in the neighbourhood.

“Jim, if you wanted to correct those sheep yonder,” said Tom, “what sort of tool would you use?”

“An ewe-twig, of course,” replied my master.

“No; that’s devilish good,” said Wallis; “but you ain’t hit it yet.”

“For a crown you don’t do a better?”

“Done!”

“Well, what is it?”

“Why, a Ram-rod to be sure—­as we’re sportsmen.”

My master agreed that it was more appropriate, and the good-natured Tom Wallis flung the crown he had won to me.

“Here’s another,” continued he, as Mr. Timmis was just raising a bottle of pale sherry to his lips—­“I say, Jim, what birds are we most like now?”

“Why swallows, to be sure,” quickly replied my patron; who was really, on most occasions, a match for his croney in the sublime art of punning, and making conundrums, a favourite pastime with the wits of the Stock Exchange.

CHAPTER V.—­The Stalking Horse.

“Retributive Justice”

On the same landing where Timmis (as he termed it) ‘held out,’ were five or six closets nick-named offices, and three other boys.  One was the nephew of the before-mentioned Wallis, and a very imp of mischief; another, only a boy, with nothing remarkable but his stupidity; while the fourth was a scrubby, stunted, fellow, about sixteen or seventeen years of age, with a long pale face, deeply pitted with the small-pox, and an irregular crop of light hair, most unscientifically cut into tufts.

He, by reason of his seniority and his gravity, soon became the oracle of the party.  We usually found him seated on the stairs of the first floor, lost in the perusal of some ragged book of the marvellous school—­scraps of which he used to read aloud to us, with more unction than propriety, indulging rather too much in the note of admiration style; for which he soon obtained the name of Old Emphatic!—­But I must confess we did obtain a great deal of information from his select reading, and were tolerably good listeners too, notwithstanding his peculiar delivery, for somehow he appeared to have a permanent cold in his head, which sometimes threw a tone of irresistible ridicule into his most pathetic bits.