What to do with himself till it should be time to return to his cheerless lodgings he did not exactly know; so he loitered along at a snail's pace. He stood for some time staring at the passengers, their luggage, and the coaches they were ascending and alighting from, and listening to the strange medley of coachmens', guards', and porters' vociferations, and passengers' greetings and leave-takings--always to be observed at the White Horse Cellar. Then he passed along, till a street row, near the Haymarket, attracted his attention and interested his feelings; for it ended in a regular set-to between two watermen attached to the adjoining coach-stand. Here he conceived himself looking on with the easy air of a swell; and the ordinary penalty (paying for his footing) was attempted to be exacted from him; but he had nothing to be picked out of any of his pockets except that under his very nose, and which contained his white handkerchief! This over, he struck into Leicester Square, where, (he was in luck that night,) hurrying up to another crowd at the farther end, he found a man preaching with infinite energy. Mr. Titmouse looked on, and listened for two or three minutes with apparent interest; and then, with a countenance in which pity struggled with contempt, muttered, loud enough to be heard by all near him, "poor devil!" and walked off. He had not proceeded many steps, before it occurred to him that a friend--one Robert Huckaback, much such another one as himself--lived in one of the narrow, dingy streets in the neighborhood. He determined to take the chances of his being at home, and if so, of spending the remainder of the evening with him. Huckaback's quarters were in the same ambitious proximity to heaven as his own; the only difference being, that they were a trifle cheaper and larger. He answered the door himself, having only the moment before returned from _his_ Sunday's excursion,--_i. e._ the Jack Straw's Castle Tea-Gardens, at Highgate, where, in company with several of his friends, he had "spent a jolly afternoon." He ordered in a glass of negus from the adjoining public-house, after some discussion, which ended in an agreement that he should stand treat that night, and Titmouse on the ensuing Sunday night. As soon as the negus had arrived, accompanied by two sea-biscuits, which looked so hard and hopeless that they would have made the nerves thrill within the teeth of him that meditated attempting to masticate them, the candle was lit; Huckaback handed a cigar to his friend; and both began to puff away, and chatter pleasantly concerning the many events and scenes of the day. "Anything stirring in to-day's 'Flash?'" inquired Titmouse, as his eye caught sight of a copy of that able and interesting Sunday newspaper, the "SUNDAY FLASH," which Huckaback had hired for the evening from the news-shop on the ground-floor of his lodgings.