The old man pleaded, with agony in his face and voice for one more advance,--one more trial,--but Quilp was firm. "Who is it?" retorted the old man, desperately, "that, notwithstanding all my caution, told you? Come, let me know the name,--the person." The crafty dwarf stopped short in his answer, and said,---- "Now, who do you think?" "It was Kit. It must have been the boy. He played the spy, and you tampered with him." "How came you to think of him?" said the dwarf. "Yes, it was Kit. Poor Kit!" So saying, he nodded in a friendly manner, and took his leave; stopping when he passed the outer door a little distance, and grinning with extraordinary delight. "Poor Kit!" muttered Quilp. "I think it was Kit who said I was an uglier dwarf than could be seen anywhere for a penny, wasn't it? Ha, ha, ha! Poor Kit!" And with that he went his way, still chuckling as he went. That evening Kit spent in his own home. The room in which he sat down, was an extremely poor and homely place, but with that air of comfort about it, nevertheless, which cleanliness and order can always impart in some degree. Late as the Dutch clock showed it to be, Kit's mother was still hard at work at an ironing-table; a young child lay sleeping in a cradle near the fire; and another, a sturdy boy of two or three years old, very wide awake, was sitting bolt upright in a clothes-basket, staring over the rim with his great round eyes. It was rather a queer-looking family; Kit, his mother, and the children, being all strongly alike. Kit was disposed to be out of temper, but he looked at the youngest child, and from him to his other brother in the clothes-basket, and from him to his mother, who had been at work without complaint since morning, and thought it would be a better and kinder thing to be good-humoured. So he rocked the cradle with his foot, made a face at the rebel in the clothes-basket, which put him in high good-humour directly, and stoutly determined to be talkative, and make himself agreeable. "Did you tell me just now, that your master hadn't gone out to-night?" inquired Mrs. Nubbles. "Yes," said Kit, "worse luck!" "You should say better luck, I think," returned his mother, "because Miss Nelly won't have been left alone." "Ah!" said Kit, "I forgot that. I said worse luck, because I've been watching ever since eight o'clock, and seen nothing of her. Hark, what's that?" "It's only somebody outside." "It's somebody crossing over here," said Kit, standing up to listen, "and coming very fast too. He can't have gone out after I left, and the house caught fire, mother!" The boy stood for a moment, really bereft, by the apprehension he had conjured up, of the power to move. The footsteps drew nearer, the door was opened with a hasty hand, and the child herself, pale and breathless, hurried into the room. "Miss Nelly! What is the matter?" cried mother and son together.