As a detail, I may as well add here that Barbara had christened the parrot Doctor Johnson, in honour of the mighty lexicographer, about whom she knew nothing except that an engraved portrait of him used to hang in what her father called his study, and that when she asked him who the original was and what he had done, he said, "Oh, I don’t know. Seems he talked a lot." The parrot talked a lot, and so he was called Doctor Johnson. I should very much have liked to hear the observations the Giant of Fleet Street would have made, had he lived long enough to be aware of the compliment. How the Misses Pennymint made both ends meet was a never-ending subject of discussion between Mrs. Poskett and Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn. They regretfully came to the conclusion that the two ladies positively worked for their living. This was a serious aspersion on the Walk—but there was a worse one. A little while ago a young man—well, a youngish man—with one shoulder a little higher than the other, had come to live with the Pennymints. At first they let it be understood that he was a distant cousin come on a visit; but when weeks passed and then months, he could no longer be described as a visitor, and the Walk had to face the fact that not only did the Misses Pennymint work for their living, but that they also kept a lodger. At first the Walk was consoled with the idea that at any rate he looked like a gentleman, and might possibly be one. But lately it had been discovered that he was a mere common fiddler, and played every evening in the orchestra at Vauxhall Gardens. Yet, in spite of his ungentlemanly profession, the man did, undoubtedly, behave like a gentleman. Moreover, it was very difficult to tax the Misses Pennymint with their ungenteel goings-on; because there was not an inhabitant of the Walk who had not experienced some kindness at their hands.