"_Very_, mind. As strong as the devil it must be, and as clear as--as your conscience." He was getting out a tin case, as he spoke. "Here it is. I got it in--I forget the name--a great place, near one of your bridges. I suppose it's as good as any to be had in this place. Of course it isn't _all_ coffee. We must go to the _heathen_ for that; but if they haven't ground up toasted skeletons, or anything dirty in it, I'm content. I'm told you can't eat or drink a mouthful here without swallowing something you never bargained for. Everything is drugged. Look at our Caiquejees! You have no such men in your padded Horse-guards. And what do they live on? Why, a crust of brown bread and a melon, and now and then a dish of pilauf! But it's good--it's pure--it's what it calls itself. You d----d Christian cheats, you're an opprobrium to commerce and civilisation; you're the greatest oafs on earth, with all your police and spies. Why it's only to _will_ it, and you _don't_; you let it go on. We are assuredly a beastly people!" "Sugar, please, sir?" "No, thank you." "Take milk, sir?" "Heaven forbid! Milk, indeed! I tell you what, Mrs.--What's your name?--I tell you, if the Sultan had some of your great fellows--your grocers, and bakers, and dairymen, and brewers, egad!--out there, he'd have 'em on their ugly faces and bastinado their great feet into custard pudding! I've seen fellows--and devilish glad I _was_ to see it, I can tell you--screaming like stuck pigs, and their eyes starting out of their heads, and their feet like bags of black currant jelly, ha, ha, ha!--for a good deal less. Now, you see, ma'am, I have high notions of honesty; and this tin case I'm going to give you will give me three small cups of coffee, as strong as I've described, six times over; do you understand?--six times three, eighteen; _eighteen_ small cups of coffee; and don't let those pretty little foxes' cubs down stairs meddle with it. Tell 'em I know what I'm about, and they'd better not, ha, ha, ha! nor with anything that belongs to me, to the value of a single piastre." Miss Sarah Rumble was a good deal dismayed by the jubilant severity of Mr. Dingwell's morals. She would have been glad had he been of a less sharp and cruel turn of pleasantry. Her heart was heavy, and she wished herself a happy deliverance, and had a vague alarm about the poor little children's falling under suspicion, and of all that might follow. But what could she do? Poverty is so powerless, and has so little time to weigh matters maturely, or to prepare for any change; its hands are always so full, and its stomach so empty, and its spirits so dull.