e of his
old attacks of spasm one night, and the whole three of them were about
his bed until morning. They were all dead when he told me this; but in
another form they still live very pleasantly as the Garland family in
the _Old Curiosity Shop_.

He had a similar illness one day in the warehouse, which I can describe
in his own words: "Bob Fagin was very good to me on the occasion of a
bad attack of my old disorder. I suffered such excruciating pain that
time, that they made a temporary bed of straw in my old recess in the
counting-house, and I rolled about on the floor, and Bob filled empty
blacking-bottles with hot water, and applied relays of them to my side,
half the day. I got better, and quite easy towards evening; but Bob (who
was much bigger and older than I) did not like the idea of my going home
alone, and took me under his protection. I was too proud to let him know
about the prison, and, after making several efforts to get rid of him,
to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him
on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side,
making believe that I lived there. As a finishing piece of reality in
case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked,
when the woman opened it, if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's house."

The Saturday nights continued, as before, to be precious to him. "My
usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge, and down that turning in the
Blackfriars Road which has Rowland Hill's chapel on one side, and the
likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over a shop-door on the
other. There are a good many little low-browed old shops in that street,
of a wretched kind; and some are unchanged now. I looked into one a few
weeks ago, where I used to buy boot-laces on Saturday nights, and saw
the corner where I once sat down on a stool to have a pair of ready-made
half-boots fitted on. I have been seduced more than once, in that street
on a Saturday night, by a show-van at a corner; and have gone in, with a
very motley assemblage, to see the Fat-pig, the Wild-indian, and the
Little-lady. There were two or three hat-manufactories there then (I
think they are there still); and among the things which, encountered
anywhere or under any circumstances, will instantly recall that time, is
the smell of hat-making."

His father's attempts to avoid going through the court having failed,
all needful ceremonies had to be undertaken to obtain the