“Well, I’ve got no friends down here,” Michael declared. “What is there to do? I’m sick of the band, and the niggers are rotten, and Stella always wants to hang about on the pier so that people can stare at her. I wish she’d go back to her glorious Germany where everything is so wonderful.” “Why don’t you read? You used to love reading,” suggested Mrs. Fane. “Oh, read!” exclaimed Michael. “There’s nothing to read. I hate Henty. Always the same!” “Well, I don’t know anything about Henty, but there’s Scott and Dickens and——” “I’ve read all them, mother,” Michael interrupted petulantly. “Well, why don’t you ask Mrs. Rewins if you can borrow a book from her, or I’ll ask her, as you don’t like going downstairs.” Mrs. Rewins brought up an armful of books which Michael examined dismally one by one. However, after several gilded volumes of sermons and sentimental Sunday-school prizes, he came across a tattered Newgate Calendar and Roderick Random, both of which satisfied somewhat his new craving for excitement. When he had finished these books, Mrs. Rewins invited him to explore the cupboard in her warm kitchen, and here Michael found Peregrine Pickle, Tom Jones, a volume of Bentley’s Miscellany containing the serial of Jack Sheppard by Harrison Ainsworth, and What Every Woman of Forty-five ought to Know. The last work upset him very much because he found it unintelligible in parts, and where it was intelligible extremely alarming. An instinct of shamefulness made him conceal this book in a drawer, but he became very anxious to find out exactly how old his mother was. She, however, was more elusive on this point than he had ever known her, and each elaborate trap failed, even the innocent production of the table for ascertaining anybody’s age in a blue sixpenny Encyclopædia: still, the Encyclopædia was not without its entertainment, and the table of diseases at the end was very instructive. Among the books which Michael had mined down in Mrs. Rewins’ kitchen was The Ingoldsby Legends illustrated by Cruikshank. These he found very enthralling, for though he was already acquainted with The Jackdaw of Rheims, he now discovered many other poems still more amusing, in many of which he came across with pleasure quotations that he remembered to have heard used with much effect by Mr. Neech in the Shell. The macabre and ghostly lays did not affect him so much as the legends of the saints. These he read earnestly as he read Don Quixote, discerning less of laughter than of Gothic adventure in their fantastic pages, while his brain was fired by the heraldic pomps and ecclesiastical glories.