It was no wonder that, until the last guest departed, Richard Pellet's eyes were turned anxiously towards the door every time it opened, when, Nemesis-like, he expected to see enter the tall, pale figure he had looked upon that day in Borton Street, his heart too much crusted with gold to allow of a single tender thought for the afflicted woman, who was sure enough to clasp her hands and ask that she might be with her child. Volume 1, Chapter XXI. TRIMMING THE LAMP. "There you are," said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a wineglass, previously well wetted round with the thin blue fluid which the Carnaby Street people bought under the impression that it was milk. "There you are," said Tim, as he sat cross-legged upon his board; "and now look sharp, and get a lump of sugar out of the basin, and take your oil before she comes back." "Brayvo! capital! and never made one ugly face," exclaimed Tim, as little Pine drank the contents of the glass, but not without a slight shudder. "That's the thing to bring you round, little one--bring you round and turn you round, and make you round as a little tub. Oil turns into fat, you know, and fat keeps you warm in winter. Fat's Nature's greatcoat, you know, for quilting and padding people's ribs, and wants no stitching on, nor pressing down. That's the way to--scissors--thank you, my pet--the way to trim the--trim the--now my twist and a short needle--that's him--to trim the lamp of life, that is; and you only want to swallow a long skein of cotton and light one end, and then you'd burn. My eye! what a go it would be for her to come home and find you burning! But come, I say, put that bottle away before she comes back." Tim was very particular that the cod-liver oil bottle should be put away before Mrs Ruggles' return from marketing; for though the dispensary doctor had ordered that medicine twice a day for the child's cough, and a reasonable quantity was supplied, Tim had an idea of his own that if it were taken twice as often, it would act with double rapidity. So he used to invest all his very spare cash in the purchase of more of the nauseous medicine, and kept a private stock, out of which he replenished the bottle in the cupboard, so that it should not appear in Mrs Ruggles' eyes to disappear too quickly.