“Well!” exclaimed Veriquear, “if Mrs. Popple told you so, she did. That is Mrs. Popple's business, and neither yours nor mine.” “Then I am mistaken, sir?” “I did not say you were mistaken. But, if you think you are, that is your own business, and not mine.” “Then what, sir,” asked Colin, somewhat puzzled, “am I to understand?” “Why,” replied Veriquear, “I shall say the same to you as I do to all young men,--understand your own business, if you have any, and, if you hav'n't, understand how to get one,--that is the next best thing.” “And that,” rejoined our hero, “is exactly what I am desirous of doing.” “Well, if you are, you are; that is your own concern.” “You seem to be fond of joking,” remarked Colin, as the blood mounted to his cheeks. “No, sir,” answered Veriquear, more sternly, “the man is not born that ever knew me joke in the whole course of my life. I have my own way, and that is no business of anybody's. Other people have theirs, and that is none of mine.” “But can you give me any employment, sir?” “Well, I suppose young men must live somehow, though that is their own concern; and I must find 'em work if I can, though that is mine.” After some further conversation, in which Mr. Veriquear's character displayed itself much as above depicted, he arrived, through a very labyrinthine path, at the conclusion that Colin should be employed upon his establishment according to the terms previously stated. Though Mr. Veriquear's premises stood nominally two stories high, and occupied a frontage some forty feet long, the roof scarcely reached to the chamber-windows of certain more modern erections on either side. The front wall,--a strange composition of timber, bricks, and plaster mingled together in very picturesque sort,--had in times gone by partially given way at the foundation, and now stood in an indescribably wry position. Having forcibly pulled the whole mass of tiling along with it, the ridge of the roof resembled the half-dislocated backbone of some fossil alligator, while a weather-beaten chimney, with great gaps between the bricks, which stood at one end, leaned sentimentally towards a dead gable, like Charlotte lamenting the sorrows of Werter. The windows, which were small and heavy, seemed to have been inserted according to the strictest laws of chance; for, exactly in those places where nobody would have expected them, there they were. By the side of the door Haunted some yards of filthy drapery, which flapped in the faces of the passers-by whenever they and a gust chanced to meet near the spot; and old bottles, secondhand ewers and basins, bits of rag, and various other descriptions of valuable “marine stores,” decorated a window which might, without much injustice, have been supposed to be glazed with clarified cow's-horn. Above, a huge doll, clad in long-clothes of dirty dimity, and suspended to a projecting iron by the crown of the head, swung in the blast like the effigy of some criminal on a gibbet-post.