The next morning, before I left home for business, I saw at once that I was right as to the house having been taken. The little old man, notwithstanding he looked so rusty, must have been a diligent, as well as a quaint, old-fashioned fellow, for there were ladders and steps, and painters, plumbers, bricklayers, and laborers all at work upon the house. Some were upon the top replacing cracked tiles, others were making the windows weather-proof, and others again were intent upon counteracting the ravages of chalk, sharp slates, and dirt upon the paint of the doors and window shutters. The group of children came as usual, but they did not venture to attempt to take up their old station; the apparition of the old man scared them from that, and perhaps they were altogether too much struck with astonishment at the altered character of the scene to attempt it. But they were very unwilling to give up their old sovereignty and abandon the spot. They lingered doubtfully for some days about the place, sometimes looking at the tall ladders and the workmen, and sometimes sitting upon the heaps of broken tiles and brickbats, watching the Irish hodman stirring the mortar about, with much the same feelings, perhaps, as a red Indian lingers about the white man's clearing, formerly the hunting-ground of his fathers. Possibly the youngsters thought that all the men and ladders might be cleared away, and that they would succeed to the again vacant door-step, with the added advantages of a newly-painted door to scratch upon, and these hallucinations were not thoroughly dispelled for about a week, when they saw a charwoman scouring the passage and front steps. That sufficed to wither all their hopes; repairs they could have survived, for they remembered something of the sort once in their own alley, but scrubbing and washing were entirely unmistakable, they understood at once that somebody was "coming in," and dispersed to seek another place of resort.