the stream of books flowed through his shop. I have known him take threepence off the price he had first affixed to a book, because he found that he had not advertised it, and therefore it had not to bear its share of the expense of the catalogue. Mr. Spelt made his way through the maze of books into the back shop, no one confronting him, and there found Mr. Kitely busy over his next catalogue, which he was making out in a school-boy's hand. "How are you, Spelt?" he said, in an alto voice, in which rung a certain healthy vigor, amounting to determination. "Just in time, I believe. My little woman has been busy in the parlor for the last hour, and I can depend upon her to the minute. Step in." "Don't let me interrupt you," suggested Mr. Spelt, meekly, and reverentially even, for he thought Mr. Kitely must be a very learned man indeed to write so much about books, and had at home a collection of his catalogues complete from the year when he first occupied the nest in the passage. I had forgot to say that Mr. Kitely was Mr. Spelt's landlord, and found him a regular tenant, else he certainly would not have invited him to tea. "Don't let me interrupt you," said Mr. Spelt. "Not at all," returned Mr. Kitely. "I'm very happy to see you, Spelt. You're very kind to my Mattie, and it pleases both of us to have you to tea in our humble way." His humble way was a very grand way indeed to poor Spelt--and Mr. Kitely knew that. Spelt could only rub his nervous, delicate hands in token that he would like to say something in reply if he could but find the right thing to say. What hands those were, instinct with life and expression to the finger nails! No hands like them for fine-drawing. He would make the worst rent look as if there never had been a rough contact with the nappy surface. The tailor stepped into the parlor, which opened out of the back shop sideways, and found himself in an enchanted region. A fire--we always see the fire first, and the remark will mean more to some people than to others--a most respectable fire burned in the grate, and if the room was full of the odor of red herrings, possibly objectionable _per se_, where was the harm when they were going to partake of the bloaters? A consequential cat lay on the hearth-rug. A great black oak cabinet, carved to repletion of surface, for which a pre-Raphaelite painter would have given half the price of one of his best pictures, stood at the end of the room. This was an accident, for Mr. Kitely could not appreciate it. But neither would he sell it when asked to do so. He was not going to mix trades, for that was against his creed; the fact being that he had tried so many things in his life that he now felt quite respectable from having settled to one for the rest of his days. But the chief peculiarity of the room was the number of birds that hung around it in cages of all sizes and shapes, most of them covered up now that they might go to sleep.