It must not be presumed that he, in an ordinary way, took his place among the lawyers' clerks, and general run of customers in the front parlour; occasionally he condescended to preside there over the quiet revels, to sing a song for the guests, which was sure to be applauded to the echo, and to engage in a little skirmish of politics with a retired lamp-maker and a silversmith's foreman from the Strand, who always called him 'Sir,' and received what he said with the greatest respect; but, as a rule, he quaffed his Falernian in a little secluded parlour behind the bar, in which sat the widow Davis, auditing her accounts in the morning, and giving out orders in the evening to Norah Geraghty, her barmaid, and to an attendant sylph, who ministered to the front parlour, taking in goes of gin and screws of tobacco, and bringing out the price thereof with praiseworthy punctuality. Latterly, indeed, Charley had utterly deserted the front parlour; for there had come there a pestilent fellow, highly connected with the Press, as the lamp-maker declared, but employed as an assistant shorthand-writer somewhere about the Houses of Parliament, according to the silversmith, who greatly interfered with our navvy's authority. He would not at all allow that what Charley said was law, entertained fearfully democratic principles of his own, and was not at all the gentleman. So Charley drew himself up, declined to converse any further on politics with a man who seemed to know more about them than himself, and confined himself exclusively to the inner room. On arriving at this elysium, on the night in question, he found Mrs. Davis usefully engaged in darning a stocking, while Scatterall sat opposite with a cigar in his mouth, his hat over his nose, and a glass of gin and water before him. 'I began to think you weren't coming,' said Scatterall, 'and I was getting so deuced dull that I was positively thinking of going home.' 'That's very civil of you, Mr. Scatterall,' said the widow. 'Well, you've been sitting there for the last half-hour without saying a word to me; and it is dull. Looking at a woman mending stockings is dull, ain't it, Charley?' 'That depends,' said Charley, 'partly on whom the woman may be, and partly on whom the man may be. Where's Norah, Mrs. Davis?' 'She's not very well to-night; she has got a headache; there ain't many of them here to-night, so she's lying down.' 'A little seedy, I suppose,' said Scatterall. Charley felt rather angry with his friend for applying such an epithet to his lady-love; however, he did not resent it, but sitting down, lighted his pipe and sipped his gin and water.