It was before old Hunkington’s house that the mutes were standing, as I passed and saw this group at the door. The charity-boy with the hoop is the son of the jolly-looking mute; he admires his father, who admires himself too, in those bran-new, sables. The other infants are the spawn of the alleys about Our Street. Only the parson and the typhus fever visit those mysterious haunts, which lie couched about our splendid houses like Lazarus at the threshold of Dives. Those little ones come crawling abroad in the sunshine, to the annoyance of the beadles, and the horror of a number of good people in the street. They will bring up the rear of the procession anon, when the grand omnibus with the feathers, and the fine coaches with the long-tailed black horses, and the gentlemen’s private carriages with the shutters up, pass along to Saint Waltheof’s. You can hear the slow bell tolling clear in the sunshine already, mingling with the crowing of Punch, who is passing down the street with his show; and the two musics make a queer medley. Not near so many people, I remark, engage Punch now as in the good old times. I suppose our quarter is growing too genteel for him. Miss Bridget Jones, a poor curate’s daughter in Wales, comes into all Hunkington’s property, and will take his name, as I am told. Nobody ever heard of her before. I am sure Captain Hunkington, and his brother Barnwell Hunkington, must wish that the lucky young lady had never been heard of to the present day. But they will have the consolation of thinking that they did their duty by their uncle, and consoled his declining years. It was but last month that Millwood Hunkington (the Captain) sent the old gentleman a service of plate; and Mrs. Barnwell got a reclining carriage at a great expense, from Hobbs and Dobbs’s, in which the old gentleman went out only once. “It is a punishment on those Hunkingtons,” Miss Clapperclaw remarks; “upon those people who have been always living beyond their little incomes, and always speculating upon what the old man would leave them, and always coaxing him with presents which they could not afford, and he did not want. It is a punishment upon those Hunkingtons to be so disappointed.” “Think of giving him plate,” Miss C. justly says, “who had chests-full; and sending him a carriage, who could afford to buy all Long Acre. And everything goes to Miss Jones Hunkington. I wonder will she give the things back?” Miss Clapperclaw asks. “I wouldn’t.” And indeed I don’t think Miss Clapperclaw would. SOMEBODY WHOM NOBODY KNOWS.