On one side of Ironfields, however, Nature had made a feeble attempt to assert herself, but then it was in a queer little village which had been the germ from whence arose this noisy town. In the old days the queer little village had stood amid green fields beside a sparkling river; but now the fields had disappeared, the sparkling river had turned to a dull, muddy stream, and the little village was improved out of all recognition. Like Frankenstein, it had created a monster which dominated it entirely, which took away even its name and reduced it from a quaint, pretty place, redolent of pastoral joys, to a dull little suburb, mostly inhabited by poor people. True, beyond stood the mansions of the Ironfields millionaires, glaring and unpicturesque, in equally glaring gardens laid out with mathematical accuracy; but the upper ten merely drove through the village on their way to these Brummagem palaces, and did not acknowledge its existence in any way. Yet a good many of their progenitors had lived in the dull suburb before Ironfields was Ironfields, but they forgot all about that in the enjoyment of their new-found splendours, and the miserable village was now a kind of poor relation, unrecognised, uncared for, and very much despised. In the principal street, narrow and winding, with old houses on either side, standing like dismal ghosts of the past, was the chemist's shop, a brand-new place, with plate-glass windows, and the name, "Wosk & Co.," in bright gold letters on a bright blue ground. Behind the plate-glass windows appeared huge bottles containing liquids red, and yellow, and green in colour, which threw demoniacal reflections on the faces of passers-by at night, when the gas flared behind them. All kinds of patent medicines were there displayed to the best advantage; bottles of tooth-brushes, cakes of Pears' soap, phials of queer shape and wondrous virtue, sponges, jars of leeches, queer-looking pipes compounded of glass and india-rubber tubing, packets of fly-exterminators, and various other strange things pertaining to the trade, all calling attention to their various excellencies in neat little printed leaflets scattered promiscuously throughout. Within, a shining counter of mahogany laden with cures for the various ills which flesh is heir to; and at the far end, a neat little glass screen with a gas-jet on top, above which could be seen the gray-black head of Mr. Wosk and the smooth red head of Mr. Wosk's assistant.