omething to do.
'He's game enough ven there's anything to be fierce about; but who could
be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that,
hanging about him?--It's enough to drive any man's heart into his boots
to see 'em together--and no mistake at all about it. I never shall
forget her first comin' here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to come--I
know he did, 'cos I took the letter. Uncommon fidgety he was all day to
be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to
Jacobs, says he, "Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few
minutes this evening, without incurring any additional expense--just to
see my wife in?" says he. Jacobs looked as much as to say--"Strike me
bountiful if you ain't one of the modest sort!" but as the gen'lm'n who
had been in the back parlour had just gone out, and had paid for it for
that day, he says--werry grave--"Sir," says he, "it's agin our rules to
let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but," says he, "for a
gentleman, I don't mind breaking through them for once." So then he
turns found to me, and says, "Ikey, put two mould candles in the back
parlour, and charge 'em to this gen'lm'n's account," vich I did. Vell,
by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough,
was the young lady, wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all
alone. I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach come,
and he vos a waitin' at the parlour door--and wasn't he a trembling,
neither? The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him.
"Oh, Harry!" she says, "that it should have come to this; and all for my
sake," says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder. So he puts his arm
round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into
the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and
soft-like--"Why, Kate," says he--'

'Here's the gentleman you want,' said Ikey, abruptly breaking off in his
story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins
Tottle, who at that moment entered the room. Watkins advanced with a
wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr.
Gabriel Parsons held out.

'I want to speak to you,' said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive
of his dislike of the company.

'This way,' replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front
drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at t