street, and finding an excuse for loitering in each dowdy shop window, every article in which they must know by heart, for they are in the street often enough, and can use their eyes well enough, I’m sure: there they were, with their outrageous crinolines, showing their anatomical-looking legs in a way that could not fail to attract the attention of any stranger coming up the street on the omnibus, whether doctor or not. The Miss Johnsons, you may be sure, were in Mrs Cook’s front parlour discussing the work for the bazaar, as they had been every afternoon for a week past. And I hope—for the sake of Miss Trimlett, the dressmaker opposite, who, though she has been engaged for the last twenty years, and could not want another lover, was looking out from behind the geraniums in the ground-floor window—that those young girls at the window above, her assistants and apprentices, worked by the piece, and not by the day; for it was one stitch and two minutes’ giggle, and another stitch and another two minutes’ giggle with them as long as I looked. And even old Miss Whittaker, who has been confined to her bed for the last three years with laziness and swollen legs, had sent over that extra sharp little girl of hers, to see whether the New Doctor was come. I went into the White Hart parlour, sat down at my accustomed side of the fire, and had the glass of gin-and-water for which I had come. Wretched spirit they do keep there now, to be sure! and the water is never half boiling! It did not use to be so in old Cook’s time. There is some extraordinary fatality about it; but as I never require the fire-shovel, and am in constant want of the poker, the former is always placed close to my hands, and the latter on the opposite side of the fireplace, so that I cannot reach it without rising from my chair,—a work of time and difficulty to me, and involving the necessity of turning down Mrs Cook’s cat, which always gets upon my knee with my full consent. It is invariably the case, and of course there was no exception to the rule now; so I had to rise as usual to get the poker, and at the very moment when I was on my legs, the ’bus drove up to the door! Of course, I could not help looking out of window to see it then; and to my great joy—for I am delighted when idle curiosity is baffled—there was not a single passenger there, except little Philips, the commercial traveller, and fat Mrs Biggs, of Great Pigton. I am the best-natured man in the world, as a general rule; but I confess I was glad of this, and chuckled to myself, as I ordered another glass of grog on the strength of it.