And he held out his large fat hand and grasped Peter's small and rather damp one. Then he bent even closer, still holding Peter's hand: “Do you know one thing?” he whispered. “No,” replied Peter, husky with awe. “It is this, that when you think of Mr. Zanti and of London and of adventures, you will look in a looking-glass--any looking-glass, and you will see--what you will see,” and he nodded all over his fat face. Peter was entirely overcome by this last astonishing statement, and was very relieved to hear numbers of clocks in the curiosity shop strike five o'clock. He got off his chair, said good-bye very politely indeed, and hurried up the dark street. For the moment even his beloved Stephen was forgotten, and looking-glasses, the face of Mr. Emilio Zanti, London streets, and Zachary's silver candlesticks were mingled confusedly in his brain. III And indeed throughout the dreary supper Peter's brain was in a whirl. It often happened that supper passed without a word of conversation from first to last. His father very rarely said anything, Peter never said anything at all, and if Aunt Jessie did venture on a little conversation she received so slender an encouragement that she always forsook the attempt after a very short time. It was a miserable meal. It was cold beef and beetroot and blanc-mange with a very, very little strawberry jam round the edges of the glass dish, and there was a hard red cheese and little stiff woolly biscuits. But old grandfather Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous complaints were as regular an accompaniment to the evening meal as the ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that his appeals for a second helping were considered abominable selfishness. “Oh, my dear, just a leetle piece of beef” (this from the very heart of the cushions). “Just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--such a leetle piece he had, and he's had such a hunger.” No answer to this and at last a strange noise from the cushions like the sound of dogs quarrelling. At last again, “Oh, just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--” and then whimpering and “poor old man” repeated at intervals that lengthened gradually into sleep.