"Must have 'alf pint now, anyhow," he muttered, and he made as if to fasten the reins to the roof of the cab, but only to plump himself down into his seat again, jig the reins, and give his whip, a sharp crack. "I'll tell the missus on you, Hatty, see if I don't?" he said, "a-trying to get your master back into his old ways. Get on with yer, or yer'll get it directly." He gave his whip such a vigorous crack in the air that Ratty consented to go, and dragging the muddy cab partially down the new street, its driver pulled up by where a knot of shoeless boys were ornamenting, and amusing themselves with, the new ill-laid pavement. One was standing like a small Colossus of Rhodes, with his grimy feet at either corner of a loose slab, making the liquid mud beneath squirt out into a puddle, while a companion carefully turned a naked foot into a stamp, dipped it in the mud, and printed a pattern all along the pave, till a third smudged it out, and a fight ensued. "Hallo, yer young dogs," roared the cabman, and his long whip gave a crack which stopped the fray; "a-fightin' like that! Where's Whaley's Place?" "First turn to the left, and first to the right," shouted two boys. "And is it all like this here?" said the cabman. "No; you should have gone round Brick Street. I'll show yer." "Hook on, then," said the cabman, turning his horse; and, to the extreme envy of his companions, the little speaker "hooked on" behind, his muddy feet slipping about on the step; but he clung fast, shouting his directions till the driver reached the main road, made a detour, and arrived at last in Whaley's Place, where the present of a copper sent the boy off in high glee to spend it in some coveted luxury. "Nice sorter cheerful spot this," said the cabman, taking an observation of the street, which was of a similar class to the new one he had left, only that the houses had fallen into a state of premature decay; quite half, too, had declined from the genteel private and taken to trade, with or without the bow window of shop life. For instance, one displayed a few penny illustrated sheets and an assortment of fly-specked clay pipes, the glass panes bearing the legends, "Tobacco" and "Cigars." Another house had the door wide open, and sundry squeaks issued therefrom--squeaks of a manufacturing tendency, indicative of grinding, the process being explained by a red and yellow board, having an artistic drawing of the machinery used, and the words, "Mangling Done Here." Then, after an interval of private houses, there was a fishmonger's, with a stock-in-trade of four plaice and ten bloaters, opposite to a purveyors, in whose open window--the parlour by rights, with the sashes out--were displayed two very unpleasant-looking decapitations of the gentle sheep, and three trays of pieces, labelled ninepence, sevenpence, and sixpence individually, apparently not from any variation of quality, but the amount of bone.