er indignation she clenched her fist and brought it down on her
knee. Unfortunately the cat came between the fist and the knee. With
its usual remonstrative mew it fled and found a place of rest and refuge
in the coal-box.

"But it's not to the Post-Office we're goin', grannie," said Phil,
laying his hand kindly on the old woman's shoulder.

"What o' that? what o' that?" she exclaimed somewhat testily at being
corrected, "has that onything to dae wi' the argiment? If ye git yer
feet wat, bairns, mind to chynge them--an' whatever ye dae--"

She stopped suddenly. One glance at her placid old countenance sufficed
to show that she had retired to the previous century, from which nothing
now could recall her except sausages. The youths therefore went out.

Meanwhile Mr Enoch Blurt sat in his brother's back shop entertaining a
visitor. The shop itself had, for a considerable time past, been put
under the care of an overgrown boy, who might--by courtesy and a
powerful stretch of truth--have been styled a young man.

Jiggs--he appeared to have no other name--was simply what men style a
born idiot: not sufficiently so to be eligible for an asylum, but far
enough gone to be next to useless. Mr Blurt had picked him up
somewhere, in a philanthropic way--no one ever knew how or where--during
one of his many searches after George Aspel. Poor Mr Blurt was not
happy in his selection of men or boys. Four of the latter whom he had
engaged to attend the shop and learn the business had been dismissed for
rough play with the specimens, or making free with the till when a few
coppers chanced to be in it. They had failed, also, to learn the
business; chiefly because there was no business to learn, and Mr Enoch
Blurt did not know how to teach it. When he came in contact with Jiggs,
Mr Blurt believed he had at last secured a prize, and confided that
belief to Mrs Murridge. So he had, as regards honesty. Jiggs was
honest to the core; but as to other matters he was defective--to say the
least. He could, however, put up and take down the shutters, call Mr
Blurt down-stairs if wanted--which he never was; and tell customers,
when he was out, to call again--which he never did, as customers never
darkened the door. Jiggs, however, formed a sufficient scarecrow to
street boys and thieves.

The visitor in the back shop--to whom we now return--was no less a
personage than Miss Gentle, whose acquaintance Mr Blurt had made on
board the