ow; but I can see him now,
staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to
look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish, now, that he hadn't taken it."

I lose here for a little while the fragment of direct narrative, but I
perfectly recollect that he used to describe Saturday night as his great
treat. It was a grand thing to walk home with six shillings in his
pocket, and to look in at the shop-windows and think what it would buy.
Hunt's roasted corn, as a British and patriotic substitute for coffee,
was in great vogue just then; and the little fellow used to buy it, and
roast it on the Sunday. There was a cheap periodical of selected pieces
called the _Portfolio_, which he had also a great fancy for taking home
with him. The new proposed "deed," meanwhile, had failed to propitiate
his father's creditors; all hope of arrangement passed away; and the end
was that his mother and her encampment in Gower Street north broke up
and went to live in the Marshalsea. I am able at this point to resume
his own account:

"The key of the house was sent back to the landlord, who was very glad
to get it; and I (small Cain that I was, except that I had never done
harm to any one) was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady, long
known to our family, in Little College Street, Camden-town, who took
children in to board, and had once done so at Brighton; and who, with a
few alterations and embellishments, unconsciously began to sit for Mrs.
Pipchin in _Dombey_ when she took in me.

"She had a little brother and sister under her care then; somebody's
natural children, who were very irregularly paid for; and a widow's
little son. The two boys and I slept in the same room. My own exclusive
breakfast, of a penny cottage loaf and a penny-worth of milk, I provided
for myself. I kept another small loaf, and a quarter of a pound of
cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard; to make my
supper on when I came back at night. They made a hole in the six or
seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the blacking-warehouse
all day, and had to support myself upon that money all the week. I
suppose my lodging was paid for, by my father. I certainly did not pay
it myself; and I certainly had no other assistance whatever (the making
of my clothes, I think, excepted), from Monday morning until Saturday
night. No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no
support, from any one that I can call to mind, s