OVER THE WAY. It was natural, after the first liveliness of the emotion which had been excited in Mrs. Parrot’s breast by the installation of a lodger worth fourteen shillings a week to her, had in some degree subsided, that she should begin to wonder who that lodger was. She had been particularly struck and greatly taken by his behaviour to the little girl, and inferred, of course, that he was a humane and tender-hearted man, a conjecture which, although it was true, did no credit to her sagacity, considering the circumstance on which it was based; since it is a notorious fact, that great rascals will admire, pet, and “tip” little children, whose parents they would not scruple to rob of their very last farthing. But though Mrs. Parrot had no doubt as to her lodger’s humanity of character after what she had seen, she could not by any means feel so sure as to the position he held either in or out of society, the calling he had followed, if ever he _had_ followed a calling, or the part of the world he came from. His name was Hampden. That was English. But had he a Christian name? No initial stood between the Mr. and the Hampden, on the card affixed to his portmanteau. _Was_ he a Christian? She hoped he was. She was no judge of other religions; but she must say, when she let her lodgings to people, that she liked to _feel_ that they were Christians. He had ordered dinner at two o’clock; and when she came in to lay the cloth, for she kept no servant, she found him still at the window, staring into the empty road as earnestly as if it were filled with a very beautiful and novel procession. But she could only suppose that he looked out of the window because he was new to the place. He smiled softly when he met her glance, but did not speak, nor would she hazard any remarks herself, for fear of being thought intrusive. All that he said during dinner was to express himself well pleased with her cooking; but she noticed, in removing the dishes, that, pleasantly as he had praised the piece of roast mutton, he had scarcely tasted it, and that of the four potatoes she had put into the dish, three and a half remained. Whilst in the kitchen she heard him leave the house, and, when her task was done, she went upstairs to her mother’s room, whither she had conducted the old lady soon after little Nelly’s visit. “If the gentleman don’t eat more every day than he’s just had for dinner,” said she, throwing herself back in a chair and fanning her hot face with the corner of her apron, “I reckon we shall have a funeral here before long.” “A what!” gasped the old woman, who sat upright in a cane chair, near the open window, with an immense Bible on her right hand and her spectacles on the top of it. “He’s no more than skin an’ bone as he is,” continued Mrs. Parrot, “but it was a picter to see him with the child. I never see a man more soft with a child before.”