“There you are then, father!” came a female voice from the door. “Here’s Uncle Isaac an’ a gentleman come to see us.” It was Bessy’s mother who spoke—a pleasant, fresh, active woman in a print dress, who stood in the doorway as the old man set back the gate. The door opened into the living-room, where sat two men, while a boy of fourteen squeezed, abashed and a trifle sulky, in a corner. There was a smell of bad cigar, which had almost, but not quite, banished the wonted smell of the room; a smell in some degree due to camphor, though, perhaps, more to caterpillar; for the walls were hidden behind boxes and drawers of divers shapes and sizes, and before the window and in unexpected places on the floor stood other boxes, covered with muslin, nurseries for larvæ, pupæ, and doomed butterflies. And so many were these things that the room, itself a mere box, gave scant space to the three people and the little round table that were in it; wherefore Bessy’s mother remained in the doorway, and Uncle Isaac, when he rose, took a very tall hat from the floor and clapped it on his head for lack of other safe place; for the little table sustained a load of cups and saucers. Uncle Isaac was a small man, though with a large face; a face fringed about with grey wisps of whisker, and characterised by wide and glassy eyes and a great tract of shaven upper lip. “Good evenin’, Mr. May, good evenin’!” said Uncle Isaac, shaking hands with the air of a man faithful to a friend in defiance of the world. “This is my friend Mr. Butson.” Mr. Butson was a tall, rather handsome man of forty or thereabout, with curly hair and whiskers, and he greeted the old man with grum condescension. “Mr. Butson,” Uncle Isaac continued, with a wave of the hand, “is a gentleman at present in connection with the steamboat profession, though above it by fam’ly and inclination. Mr. Butson an’ me ’as bin takin’ a day’s ’olludy with a seleck party by name of beanfeast, in brakes.” “O yes,” responded old May, divesting himself of his bag; “we passed some of ’em by the Dun Cow, an’ very merry they was, too, with concertinas, an’ kiss-in-the-ring, an’ what not—very gay.” “O damn, no,” growled the distinguished Butson. “Not that low lot. He means that coster crowd in vans,” he added, for Uncle Isaac’s enlightenment. “I ain’t fell as low as that. Lor, no.” He sucked savagely at the butt of his cigar, found it extinct, looked vainly for somewhere to fling it, and at last dropped it into a teacup.