When Colin entered, Miss Aphra cast her eyes momentarily up, and half blushed as she resumed her sewing. The children stared in wonder at him, as they might at the sudden appearance of a frog in the kitchen. The baby caught sight of him, and began to squeal like a sucking pig; while Mrs. Veriquear cast an ill-tempered eye upon him, as much as to say she wanted none of him there; and then shook her infant into an absolute scream with the exclamation,--“What are you crying at, you little fidget! _He's_ not going to hurt you, I'll take care of that. Hush--hush--hush-sh-sh!” And away went the rocking-chair at a rate quite tantamount to the extreme urgency of the occasion. When they sat down to supper, it was discovered that Master William had picked out the hearts of two sticks of celery, and extracted a plug three inches long, by way of taster, from the Dutch cheese. This being a case that imperatively demanded the application of summary punishment, Colin got nothing to eat until Mr. Veriquear had risen from the table, and applied a few inches of old cane to the lad's shoulders, which he did with this brief preparatory remark, “Now, my boy, as you have made it your business to pull that plug out, it becomes mine to try if I can't plug you.” Master William howled like a jackal before he was touched; his younger brother Ned cried because Bill did; and Mrs. Veriquear stormed at her husband, because he could not thrash the lad without making noise enough over it to wake the very dead. Miss Marvel looked as solemn during this farce as though it had been a tragedy; while Colin squeezed his nose up in his handkerchief as forcibly as though a lobster had seized it between his nippers, in order to prevent Mrs. Veriquear seeing how irreverently his fancy was tickled at this exhibition of domestic enjoyments. Uninviting as his dormitory over the warehouses had previously appeared, the character of the kitchen and its inhabitants seemed so much more so, that it was with comparative delight he heard the clock of Shoreditch church strike ten, as a signal for him to take possession of a tin lantern provided for the occasion. Accordingly, carrying a bunch of keys in his hand, wherewith to lock himself in, he strode across the yard to his solitary and comfortless chamber. During the first few hours which had elapsed after Colin had retired to his ghostly-look-ing dormitory, it was in vain he tried to coax and persuade himself to sleep. That fantastical deity, Somnus, seemed determined to contradict his wishes; and therefore he lay with his eyes wide open, counting how many chinks he could see between the tiles over his head, and listening to the musical compliments which passed between some friendly tom and tabby cats, whose tails and backs were evidently elevated in a very picturesque manner outside the ridge above him.