"Tchsh! I can't hear a word if you mumble like that. Oh, be off with you: I've got no time to waste. I'm seventy, and if I'm lucky I've got ten years to live. You're five-and-twenty, and got fifty-five, so you are wasteful of your time, and spend it in running after girls who don't want you--like your beautiful brother Fred. Bless him! if I had any money to leave I'd put him down in my will for it--an artful, designing scoundrel!" "Look here, Mr Hopper," cried Tom hotly, "you can abuse me as much as you like, and tell tales as much as you like, and play the sneak; but because you've known me from a child I won't stand here and hear my brother maligned." "There, it's no use, I can't hear a word you say," grumbled the old fellow; "but it don't matter,--I can see by your manner that you are abusing a poor helpless old man, the friend of your mother and that girl's father, and you are keeping her back, so that she'll be late with her parcel, and make her lose the work, and then you'll be happy." "Confound--" began Tom. "Here, come along, Jessie," he cried, snatching her arm through his; and the old man stood chuckling to himself as he watched them out through the tunnel, before he made for the door with the red sign, and giving a sharp rap with his stick entered at once, nodding quietly at Mrs Shingle. "Here, I've brought Dick a job," he said, carrying the old pair of boots to the bench. "He's to do them directly, and they're to be sixpence--I won't pay another penny. Are you listening?" Mrs Shingle nodded, and went on with her work. "He's to put a good big corn on the last of the left-hand foot, and then cut away the leather, well beat a patch and put it on. My left foot hurts me horrid." "You ought to have a new pair," said Mrs Shingle. "Hey?" "You ought to have a new pair," she continued, a trifle more loudly. "Have a new pair?" Mrs Shingle nodded. "Bah! How can I afford a new pair? Times are hard. Ships' husbands don't make money like they used. New pair, indeed! They're good enough for me. Tell him to mend 'em well, and they are to be sixpence, d'yer hear?" Mrs Shingle nodded, with her silk in her mouth, gave it a twang, and went on. "You'll break your teeth one of these days," said the old fellow, taking off his hat, placing it on his stick, and standing it in a corner. Then, going in a slow, bent way to the well waxed and polished Windsor chair, he gave the chintz cushion a punch, took a long clay pipe off the chimney-piece, made it chirrup, reached an old leaden tobacco-box from the same place, set it up on the table, and sat down. "My teeth are used to it," said Mrs Shingle, smiling pleasantly, as if she were quite accustomed to the old fellow's proceedings. "Hey?" "I say my teeth are used to it," repeated Mrs Shingle. "Oh!--Don't shout.--I say, this tobacco's as dry as a chip," he continued, filling his pipe. Mrs Shingle sighed.