"As you choose, Mr. Aubrey," replied Gammon, with difficulty concealing his feelings of pique and disappointment at losing the opportunity of a _personal introduction by Mr. Aubrey to his family_. After a few words of general conversation, Gammon inquiring how Mr. Aubrey liked his new profession, and assuring him, in an emphatic manner, that he might rely upon being supported, from the moment of his being called to the bar, by almost all the common-law business of the firm of "Quirk, Gammon, and Snap"--they parted. It had been to Mr. Aubrey a memorable interview--and to Gammon a somewhat arduous affair, taxing to an unusual extent his great powers of self-command, and of dissimulation. As soon as he was left alone, his thoughts instantly recurred to Aubrey's singular burst of hauteur and indignation. Gammon had a stinging sense of submission to superior energy--and felt indignant with himself for not having at the moment resented it. Setting aside this source of exquisite irritation to the feelings of a proud man, he felt a depressing consciousness that he had not met with his usual success in his recent encounter with Mr. Aubrey; who had been throughout cautious, watchful, and courteously _distrustful_. He had afforded occasional glimpses of the unapproachable pride of his nature--and Gammon had crouched! Was there anything in their interview--thought he, walking thoughtfully to and fro in his room--which, when Aubrey came to reflect upon--for instance--had Gammon disclosed too much concerning the extent of his influence over Titmouse? His cheek slightly flushed; a sigh of fatigue and excitement escaped him; and gathering together his papers, he began to prepare for quitting the office for the day. Mr. Aubrey left Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap's office with feelings of mingled exhaustion and despondency. As he walked down Saffron Hill--a dismal neighborhood!--what scenes did he witness! Poverty and profligacy revelling, in all their wild and revolting excesses! _Here_, was an Irishman, half-stupefied with liquor and bathed in blood, having just been rescued from a savage fight in a low underground public-house cellar, by his squalid wife, with dishevelled hair and a filthy infant in her arms--who walked beside him cursing, pinching, and striking him--reproaching him with the knowledge that she and her seven children were lying starving at home. Presently he stumbled; she with her wretched infant falling down with him; and she lay striking, and scratching, and abusing him till some one interfered. _There_, was a woman--as it were a bloated mass of filth steeped in gin--standing with a drunken smile at an old-clothes stall, pawning a dirty little shirt, which she had a few minutes before stripped from the back of one of her four half-naked children!