Richard Shingle was not an ill-looking man of forty; but he had a rather weak, vacillating expression of countenance, over which predominated a curious, puzzled look, which was due to something you could not make out. One moment you felt sure it was his eyes, but the next you said decidedly it was his mouth, while just as likely you set it down to his fair hair or his rather hollow cheeks, or the turn of his chin. The fact was, it was due to all his features, his figure, and his every attitude; for Richard Shingle, as he stood before you, seemed as if he had just taken you by the button-hole and said in full sincerity, as applied to the general scheme of life and man's position on earth: "I say, what does it all mean?" For he was one of those men who had never "got on." He said he wanted to get on, and he worked very hard; but the world was too much for him, and he was always left behind. If he had lived at the equator, where it is hot, and man naturally feels inert, while the world races round at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, it is only natural to suppose that he might have been left behind; but it would have been just the same if Richard Shingle's existence had been upon the very Pole itself, north or south, where he would only have been called upon to turn once round in twenty-four hours. As he lived in that part of the temperate zone known as Islington, where the medium rate of progress is in force, it remained then, that not only could poor Dick never get ahead, but was always, in spite of his misplaced efforts, getting a little more and a little more behind. And yet he looked a sharp, animated man, full of action, as on this occasion, when he turned to his wife with "Well, mother, here we are again, boots and all!" "But you've not brought them back again, Dick?" said Mrs Shingle, looking anxiously up from her work. "What do you call that, then?" said Dick, taking a blue bag from the doleful-looking, thin, white-faced boy with very short hair, and turning the receptacle upside down, so that the contents fell out on the floor with a bang. "Oh, Dick!" "He said they were the wussest-made pair of boots he ever see. After all the pains as I took with 'em," said the speaker, gloomily picking up the freshly polished leather, and examining it. "Oh, Dick--how tiresome!" "And swore he couldn't get his feet into 'em,--leastwise," he added correctively, "he didn't swear--Max is too good to swear--he said as he couldn't get his feet in 'em." "Tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated Mrs Shingle, stitching away at her work. "He blowed me up fine; said I wasn't fit to shoe a horse, let alone a Christian man. When--look at 'em. Did you ever see a prettier pair-- eh, Hoppy?" he shouted. The old man glanced at the boots and grunted, turning away again directly.