"Thomas! How can you talk like that? After bringing us to this dreadful place! Go after those benighted girls at once, and bring them back, and that wretched Daniel Dyer, and that miserable child, and Matthew Holman, too." It struck me, from her manner, that my aunt was hovering on the verge of hysterics. When I was endeavouring to explain how it was that I did not see my way to start off, then and there, in a sort of general hunt, an official, sauntering up, took a bird's-eye view of Mrs. Penna. "Hallo, old lady what's the matter with you? Aren't you well?" "No, I be not well--I be dying. Take me home and let me die upon my bed." "So bad as that, is it? What's the trouble?" "I've been up all night and all day, and little to eat and naught to drink, and I be lame." "Lame, are you?" The official turned to my aunt. "You know you didn't ought to bring a lame old lady into a crowd like this." "I didn't bring her. My nephew brought us all." "Then the sooner, I should say, your nephew takes you all away again, the better." The official took himself off. Mr. Poltifen made a remark. His tone was a trifle sour. "I cannot say that I think we are spending a profitable and pleasurable day in London. I understood that the object which we had in view was to make researches into Dickens's London, or I should not have brought my books." The "parish idiot" began to moan. "I be that hungry--I be! I be!" "Here," I cried: "here's half-a-crown for you. Go to that refreshment-stall and cram yourself with penny buns to bursting point." Off started Sammy Trevenna; he had sense enough to catch my meaning. My aunt called after him. "Sammy! You mustn't leave us. Wait until we come." But Sammy declined. When, hurrying after him, catching him by the shoulder, she sought to detain him, he positively showed signs of fight.