enough to leave his wife a small
annuity. Shortly before his death he had been promoted to the command
of one of the Thames steamboats plying between Chelsea and London
Bridge, in virtue of which office he had taken to himself--or rather his
wife had claimed for him--the title of "captain," and with this patent
of gentility had held up her head ever since. Her children, following
her good example, were not slow to hold up their heads too, and were
fully convinced of their own gentility. Samuel Shuckleford had, as his
mother termed it, been "entered for the law" shortly after his father's
death, and Miss Jemima Shuckleford, after the month's sojourn at a
ladies' boarding-school already referred to, had settled down to assist
her mother in the housework and maintain the dignity of the family by
living on her income.

Such were the new next-door neighbours of the Crudens when at last they
arrived, sadly, and with the new world before them, at Number 6, Dull
Street.

Mr Richmond, who, with all his unfortunate manner, had acted a friend's
part all along, had undertaken the task of clearing up affairs at Garden
Vale, superintending the payment of Mr Cruden's debts, the sale of his
furniture, and the removal to Dull Street of what little remained to the
family to remind them of their former comforts.

It might have been better if in this last respect the boys and their
mother had acted for themselves, for Mr Richmond appeared to have hazy
notions as to what the family would most value. The first sight which
met the boys' eyes as they arrived was their tennis-racquets in a corner
of the room. A very small case of trinkets was on Mrs Cruden's
dressing-table, and not one of the twenty or thirty books arranged on
the top of the sideboard was one which any member of the small household
cared anything about.

But Mr Richmond had done his best, and being left entirely to his own
devices, was not to be blamed for the few mistakes he had made. He was
there to receive Mrs Cruden when she arrived, and after conducting the
little party hurriedly through the three rooms destined for their
accommodation, considerately retired.

Until the moment when they were left to themselves in the shabby little
Dull Street parlour, not one of the Crudens had understood the change
which had come over their lot. All had been so sudden, so exciting, so
unlooked-for during the last few weeks, that all three of them had
seemed to go through it a