It was a sight worth seeing--the satisfaction of that grim old man, as he went chuckling down the creaking stairs, and out into the court. His was not the shape a painter would have chosen for the embodiment of gratitude; but there it was--even the battered, ill-used carcass of that old printer--a body misused by the hard world till he had grown careless of it himself, and misused it in his turn. Alone in the world, what had he to care for beyond a little present enjoyment? For as to the future, it is to be feared that Mr Sterne would have pronounced him as being beneath a dense black cloud. Twice was the old man stopped by lamp-posts, but he recollected himself and continued his route to where the open door of the cook-shop sent out a thick, kitcheny vapour, pleasant or the reverse, according to whose organs it assailed--to the well-fed perhaps disgusting, but to the poor and hungry an odour as of paradise. There upon the shining pewter dishes, that in the early morn had been such a dry metallic desert, were now displayed, in gravy-oozing majesty, what Matt looked upon as all the delicacies of the season. There were round of beef and brisket, boiled; roast leg, shoulder, and loin of mutton; roast beef, and the remains of the veal; while as to gravy--whence comes the gravy that meanders in streams over cook-shop joints, flooding the dishes, and making glad the hearts of the hungry?-- there was gravy to an extent never known in private life, for the joints soaked in the tissue-renovating fluid. Ah! that fat cook-shop-keeper, as he wielded his long-bladed, keen carver, and equitably and glibly sliced it through fat and lean, well-done, under-done, and brown, with a facility that made one think he had been apprenticed to a ham in the palmy days of Vauxhall--dealing with the porcine joint with similar intentions to those of the gold-beater with his morsel of the yellow ore. Ah! that fat, rosy-faced man in the white cap and jacket had much to answer for in the way of tempting hungry sinners. Fat! he might well be fat, for was he not existing upon the very essences of the meats always beneath his nostrils, which must have inhaled sustaining wealth at every breath he drew, to the saving of both teeth and digestion? But he did not tempt old Matt, who entered and asked for a "small German," for which he paid twopence, asking no questions regarding its composition, while it was delivered to him after the fashion that buns are presented to our old ursine friends at the "Zoo"--stuck at the end of a fork.