From the tin kettle, which Maggie had placed by the stove, there arose an odor of fried sausages--a savory mess to a hungry man, possessed of a reasonable amount of confidence in the integrity and conscientiousness of sausage-makers in general. Andre made himself as useful as possible to his employers, and they could not well spare him in the middle of the day to go home to his dinner, for during 'change hours the shop was full of customers. If there was a lull any time before three o'clock, he ate the contents of the tin pail; if not, he dined at a fashionable hour. Andre could not well be spared, because there were certain dignified men, presidents of banks and insurance companies, venerable personages with a hold upon the last generation, who came from their homes in the middle of the day to read the newspapers at the "China," or the "Fireman;" staid old merchants, who had retired from active life, and went to the counting-room only to look after the junior partners--men who always shaved down town, and would not let any barber but Andre touch their faces. His hand was so soft and silky, his touch so tender and delicate, and his razors were so keen and skilfully handled, that he was a favorite in the shop. Years before, Andre had set up a shop for himself; but he had no talent for business, and the experiment was a failure. He was too effeminate to control his journeymen, and his shop was not well ordered. All his regular customers insisted on being shaved by Andre; and, while he paid the wages of two men, he did all the work himself. The rent and other expenses overwhelmed him; but he had the good sense to sell out before he became involved in debt. There he was, in the shop of Cutts & Stropmore, and there he was likely to be--a journeyman barber to the end of his mortal pilgrimage. The highest wages were paid him; but Andre had no ambition to gratify, and when one week's wages were due, every cent of the earnings of the preceding one was invariably used up. If there was a ten-cent piece left in his pocket on Saturday morning, he took care to spend it for something to gratify Maggie or Leo before he went to the shop. For this boy and girl--though they were not his own children, or even of any blood relation to him--he lived and labored as lovingly and patiently as though God had blessed him in the paternal tie. Half an hour after Maggie left the shop there was a brief lull in the business, and Andre seized his kettle, and bore it to a kind of closet, where hair oils, hair washes, and the "Celebrated Capillary Compound" were concocted. With a sausage in one hand and a penny roll in the other, he ate as a hungry man eats when the time is short. Andre's appetite was good, and thus pleasantly was he employed when Leo, the barber's adopted son, entered the laboratory of odoriferous compounds. "Maggie says you want to see me," said Leo.