here, in this region of law costs and voluminous writing, the trees put forth twigs and sprays of a sharp spiky nature, a compromise between porcupine penholders and a _chevaux de frise_, to enable them to set attack at defiance. Enter one house here, and you would have found upon the ground-floor your QC or Serjeant--Brother So-and-so as he is so affectionately called by the judge; upon the first-floor, your substantial firms of family solicitors, deep in title, lease, covenant, and tenancy in every form or shape--men who set such store by their knowledge that they dole it out to you at so much per dozen words--words adulterated with obsolete expressions repeated _ad nauseam_; while upon the second-floor you would probably find firms of sharp practitioners, ready for business in any shape; and, as elsewhere through the house, the names of the occupants were painted upon the doors--black letters upon a parchment ground. But the house in question was not entirely legal in its occupants, for if you had been ascending the stairs, before you had gone far, a loud sniff would have made you raise your head sharply towards the skylight, beneath which, sitting, or rather perched, upon the top balustrade, would have been visible the doughy, big, baby-like face of Mrs Sims, strongly resembling, with the white-muslin wings on either side, a fat-cheeked cherub, freshly settled after some ethereal flight. Mrs Sims was the lady who did for those gentlemen of the house who wanted doing for, took in parcels, answered bells, and was also well-known in the neighbourhood as a convenient party in times of sickness, being willing to nurse a bachelor gentleman of the legal profession, or one of the poor fraternity of the rags around. She had stood at many a bedside had Mrs Sims, and seen the long sleep come to many a weary, broken-hearted suitor, and she had sniffed and sobbed at the recital of their miseries, offering the while such consolation as she could from the depths of a very simple but very honest heart. After another loud sniff, and a curtsey performed invisibly, except that the cherubic head was seen to bob out of sight, and then apparently re-perch itself upon the balustrade, Mrs Sims would say "At home," or "Not at home," as the case might be. Then, as you left the staircase, the head would disappear, and, summer or winter, Mrs Sims might be heard refreshing herself with a blow at the fire by means of a very creaky, asthmatic pair of bellows. Mrs Sims was busy, and had made visible the whole of her person, as standing at the door she pointed out into the square, calling the attention of one of _her_ lodgers, as she termed them, to a passer-by. "Here, you sir; fetch a cab--a four-wheeler," shouted the lodger. "No; confound your bird--I don't want birds, I want a cab."