"The world is not _all_ misery for that poor old dog," thought Ingram, as he walked on: "very likely, the few minutes' pleasure he receives every morning from the gentle sympathy of the black tom-cat renders him happily forgetful of the labour and hardness of the remaining part of the day. And yet, the poor old dog looked as if he were poorly fed; and what a mortification it must be to be carrying food to the cats, and have so little himself: always in the smell of it, but never or seldom to taste: almost as bad as Tantalus steeped to the very chin, and most likely drenched through the skin, and yet dry as a fish! There is a something that pleases me, however, very much, in this act of the kind, brotherly tom-cat," said Ingram to himself, "and I'll see this sight again." And Ingram saw the sight again, for he took care to walk in the same neighbourhood for the three mornings following, and felt increasing pleasure in witnessing the black tom-cat rub his back under the poor old dog's chin, while the dog looked each morning as richly gratified as ever. Ingram Wilson was satisfied that if those few minutes' pleasure did not form a compensation for the poor dog's every day's pain, they went very far towards it. But the circumstance of a pale, handsome young man, though rather seedily dressed, coming through that particular street every morning, for four mornings, at the same hour, and standing to look at that old dog and tom-cat, was an occurrence not likely to go unnoticed in London, where people notice every minute circumstance in a way that much surprised Ingram Wilson, when he first began to find it out, for he had calculated on a very different sort of feeling in that respect. Nothing, indeed, annoyed him so much as the keen impudent stare of strangers, full in his face, and for several seconds: for Ingram did not reflect that he must be staring equally hard, or he would not know that other people were staring at him. And nothing pestered him more than to observe passengers smile and talk to their companions, as they observed Ingram's lips move, when some thought passed through his mind earnestly; and yet he forgot how much he had been struck with that circumstance, above every thing, when he first walked along Cheapside, and Ludgate and Fleet Streets, and the Strand: the very great number of people who talked to themselves as they walked alone, and even motioned with their hands in the most earnest manner. Ingram had been closely observed, and the observance, on the fourth morning, produced him an adventure. He was turning to move on, at the end of his fourth soliloquy on the dog-and-cat spectacle, when a tall gentlemanly person, with a cane, stepped from the house where the tom-cat ran in, and seemed bent on walking along the street in Ingram's company. "A fine morning, sir," said the gentleman: "you seemed to be interested with our fine old cat and his way of saying, 'How d'ye do?' to the old dog, every morning."