"Old age, Mr. Kitely!" Mattie broke in. "If you talk in that way, think what you make of me!" A general laugh greeted this remark. But Mattie was serious, and did not even smile. Poppie never opened her lips, except to smile. But she behaved with perfect propriety. Mr. Spelt had civilized her so far, and that without much trouble. He never told any one, however, that it was with anxiety that he set out every night at half-past nine to bring her home; for more than once he had found her potato-steamer standing alone on the pavement, while she was off somewhere, looking at something, or following a crowd. He had stood nearly half an hour before she came back upon one of those occasions. All she said when she returned was, "I thought I should find you here, daddy." But I must not linger with the company assembled in the bookseller's back-parlor; for their conversation will not help my reader on with my story. A very little man, with very short, bandy legs, was trudging along a wide and rather crowded thoroughfare, with a pair of workman's boots in his hand. It was Mr. Spelt's _sub_, Mr. Dolman, the cobbler. "Well, Dolly, how do?" said a man in a long velveteen coat, with a short pipe in his mouth and a greasy cloth cap on his head. "You're late to-night, ain't you, Dolly?" "Them lawyers; them lawyers, Jim!" returned Dolman, enigmatically. "What the blazes have you got to do with lawyers?" exclaimed Jim Salter, staring at the cobbler, who for the sake of balance had now got one boot in each hand, and stood weighing the one against the other. "Not much for my own part," returned Dolman, who was feeling very important from having assisted at his neighbors' _flitting_. "But there's good people in our court could tell you another story." I have said that Mrs. Boxall did anything but hold her tongue about her affairs, and Dolman had heard Mr. Worboise's behavior so thoroughly canvassed between Mr. Kitely and Mr. Spelt, that he was familiar with the main points of the case. "Come and have a drop of beer," said Jim, "and tell us all about it." No greater temptation could have been held out to Dolman. But he had a certain sense of duty that must first be satisfied. "No, Jim. I never touch a drop till I've taken my work home." "Where's that?" asked Jim. "Down by the Minories," answered the cobbler. "Come along, then. I'll help you carry it." "'Taint heavy. I'll carry it myself," answered Dolman, who, having once been robbed on a similar occasion, seemed, in regard to boots, to have lost his faith in humanity. "I can't think, Dolly, why you roost so far from your work. Now it's different with me. My work's here and there and everywhere; but yours is allus in the same place."