There came a day when he made his promenade—alone. And he was attired in mourning. Whether he had donned sables out of respect for the memory of his canine friend I cannot say, but the dog was dead and the man was in mourning. Shortly after this the buck of the Regency himself disappeared. Then inquiries were made. The dandy was dead. He had lodged in Westminster. He was a half-pay Major, and, except that he dressed oddly and clipped and groomed his poodle with his own hands, he appears to have had few eccentricities. His landlady wept as she spoke of him. “My dear gentleman” she called him, and she had a hundred and one stories to relate of his kindly disposition, his practical benevolence, and his racial pride. He was a Scotsman. Of the same period as that of the Scots Major was Kitty, the old Irish flower-seller. Kitty was about seventy years old when I first made her acquaintance. She perambulated the north side of the Strand, her beat being bounded by the old Gaiety Theatre on the east, and by the Adelphi on the west. She was a “character.” She knew nearly all her customers by name, though how she acquired the information the Lord only knows. “Witty Kitty” she was called, and not without good reason. I was standing one day on the step of the _Globe_ office, talking to Henri Van Laun, the friend and translator of Taine. Kitty came up to us with her basket of sweet-smelling wares. Van Laun, who hated an interruption while in the act of unwinding one of his interminable yarns, motioned her away with a cross word and an angry gesture. Van Laun was a Jew who had the national characteristics very severely marked in nose and lips and complexion. Kitty did not at once accept her dismissal. “Ah, buy one for the love o’ God!” she persisted. Van Laun turned on her. He was professedly an agnostic, and fond of airing the fact. “No, no! Who is zis Almighty zat I should buy for love of him? Hey?” he queried fiercely. “Och, sir,” said Kitty, in sad, reproachful accents, “an’ is it pretendin’ not to know Him you are—an’ you wan of His _chosen_ people!” The calculated accent on the “chosen” was delightful. From that day Van Laun became one of “Witty Kitty’s” most profitable customers.