So saying, Mr. Scadgers took the bills from Jinks and placed them in his fat pocketbook, which he buttoned into the breast-pocket of his frock-coat, gave himself a good mopping with the red-silk pocket-handkerchief before throwing it into the big white hat, and placing that elegant article on his head, took up the one damp glove and the ruler-like stick, and went out. A consciousness of the shirt-frill, or the hat, or both, pervaded Mr. Scadgers' mind as he walked through the streets; and gave him an air very different from that which usually characterised his business perambulations. He seemed to feel that he was calling upon the passers-by for observation and notice; and certainly the passers-by seemed to respond to the appeal. Ribald boys stuck the red-covered books of domestic household expenditure which they carried into their breasts, and swaggered by with heads erect; others openly expressed their opinion that it was "all dicky" with him; while a more impudent few suggested that he had stolen the "guv'nor's tile," or borrowed his big brother's hat; nor were the suggestions that he was a barber's clerk out for a holiday wanting on the youthful populace. In an ordinary way Mr. Scadgers was thoroughly proof against the most cutting chaff: the most terrific things had been said about his boots, and he had remained adamant; drunken men had requested permission to light their pipes at his nose, and he had never winced; in allusion to his swivel-eye, boys had asked him to look round the corner and tell them what o'clock it was, without ruffling his temper in the smallest degree. But in the present instance he felt in an abnormal state; he knew that there was ground for the satire which was being poured out upon him, and he fled into the first omnibus for concealment. He rode to the utmost limits of the omnibus-journey, and when he alighted he had still a couple of miles to walk to his destination. He inquired his way and set out manfully. The weather was magnificent; one of those early October days when, though the sun's rays are a little tempered of their burning heat, and the air has a freshness which it has not known for months, the country yet wears a summer aspect. Mr. Scadgers' way lay along a high-road, on either side of which were fields: now huge yellow patches shorn of their produce, and, while awaiting the ploughshare, looking like the clean-shaved faces of elderly gentlemen; now broken up into rich loam furrows driven through by the puffing snorting engine which has supplanted the patient Dobbin, the handle-holding labourer, and whip-cracking boy of our childhood, and against which Mr. Tennyson's Northern farmer inveighed with such bitterness. Far away on the horizon lay a broad wooded belt, broken in the centre, where two tall trees, twining their topmost branches together, formed a kind of natural arch, and beyond which one expected--absurdly enough--to find the sea. The road was quiet enough;