you sure he is asleep?" asked the Tinker, with an unwilling air, as
he shouldered his wallet.

"Sure."

"Then I'll look at him for a quarter of a minute," said the Tinker,
"since you so much wish it; but not a moment longer."

They all three went back across the road; and, through the barred window,
by the dying glow of the sunset coming in at the gate--which the child
held open for its admission--he could be pretty clearly discerned lying
on his bed.

"You see him?" asked Mr. Traveller.

"Yes," returned the Tinker, "and he's worse than I thought him."

Mr. Traveller then whispered in few words what he had done since morning;
and asked the Tinker what he thought of that?

"I think," returned the Tinker, as he turned from the window, "that
you've wasted a day on him."

"I think so too; though not, I hope, upon myself. Do you happen to be
going anywhere near the Peal of Bells?"

"That's my direct way, sir," said the Tinker.

"I invite you to supper there. And as I learn from this young lady that
she goes some three-quarters of a mile in the same direction, we will
drop her on the road, and we will spare time to keep her company at her
garden gate until her own Bella comes home."

So, Mr. Traveller, and the child, and the Tinker, went along very
amicably in the sweet-scented evening; and the moral with which the
Tinker dismissed the subject was, that he said in his trade that metal
that rotted for want of use, had better be left to rot, and couldn't rot
too soon, considering how much true metal rotted from over-use and hard
service.

FOOTNOTES

{1} Dickens didn't write chapters 2 to 5 and they are omitted in this
edition.

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