ook your own sausages for supper, my man, and
shell out what you owe on the nail. We'll see who won't stand it or
not!"

This threat had the desired effect: Horncastle knuckled down as if by
magic.

"Oh, don't be a brute, Mrs Nash," he said, in tones of agitation. "Do
us those sausages, there's a good body, and you can cram in half a dozen
kids if you like."

And so the question of my admission was settled satisfactorily, if not
flatteringly, for me, and the fellows, the novelty of my appearance
being once over, took no more notice of me than of any of the rest of
their fellow-lodgers.

Mrs Nash's establishment appeared to be one to which fond parents in
the country, whose darlings were about to launch out on the sea of life
in London, were invited to confide their sons, under the promise of a
comfortable, respectable, and economical home.

As to the comfortable, we who were best able to judge did not admit the
description a true one. As to the respectable, that was a matter of
opinion. If each of us had been the only lodger there, the place would
have been undoubtedly respectable, but with all the rest there, we each
of us considered the society rather "mixed." As to the economical, we
were all agreed on that point. The place was fearfully and wonderfully
economical!

By the time my first week in London was ended I had shaken down fairly
well, both to my work at Merrett, Barnacle, and Company's and my
quarters at Mrs Nash's. I still found the fellowship of Messrs.
Doubleday and Wallop and Crow rather distracting, and more than once
envied Jack his berth among the Imports where, as a rule, silence
reigned supreme. And yet I could hardly bring myself to dislike my
fellow-clerks, who, all of them, as far as I had found out, were good-
natured, and certainly very entertaining, and who, when they perceived
that I was amused by their proceedings, relaxed a good deal in their
attitude to me.

I gradually came to be on talking, if not on chaffing terms with several
of the fellows, and found myself, I never exactly knew how, installed in
the position, lately vacated by Mr Crow, of messenger and confidential
commission agent to the company. Most of my twenty minutes in the
middle of the day was thus taken up in buying articles of comfort or
decoration for one and another of my seniors, or else changing books at
the library, taking messages to other clerks in other offices, and
otherwise laying myself out for t