or beside the wharves; some with their sails up, some with
their sails hanging most untidily, and some with their sails neatly
rolled up and tied; and he would certainly have gone down there, only
his father had told him to hurry.

Freddie lived in a fine two-story brick house in a row like this one, a
long, long way off; three squares off (they say "squares" in that city
when they mean a straight line between two streets and not a square at
all) down the same street on which the Old Tobacco Shop fronts; and it
really takes a good while to go all that way, for there is a boy
half-way down, a big boy, who belongs to a Gang, and likes to bully
little boys, and you have to watch your chance to get out of his way,
and there is a place with a knot-hole in the fence where you can see all
kinds of rusty springs and bed-rails and birdcages and barrel hoops
piled up inside the yard, and a tin-can factory where you can pick up
little round pieces of tin just as good as dollars, and a church (where
the clock is) with a fat old man sitting on the pavement in a chair
tilted back against the church wall smoking a long pipe, who doesn't
mind being stared at from the curbstone, and a street-car track where
you have to look out for the horse-car, which is very dangerous when the
horse begins to trot, and--but Freddie hadn't lived long in his fine
two-story house in that street, and these things were new to him and
took time. But the newest and biggest thing he had yet found (not that
it was really big, you know) was the wooden hunchback outside the door
of the Old Tobacco Shop; and you have seen how much time _that_ took.

Freddie found himself inside the shop, and his hand grasped tight by the
big strong hand of the hunchback, so tight that he wriggled a little to
get loose; but the hunchback only held him tighter. "Come along," he
said, "you'd better come in here and see my Aunt Amanda, or Mr. Punch
may step out and get you; and _then_ where would you be?"

Freddie looked back out of doors over his shoulder, but it did not seem
as if Mr. Punch meant to step out that time. He breathed easier. The
shop was a very little shop, with shelves on the wall behind the
counter, and a window in front where he saw the back of the bull-dog's
head. The two show-cases on the counter were full of pipes of all kinds,
and cigars and tobacco and cigarettes, and piled on the shelves were
boxes of cigars and jars and tins of tobacco, and on the wooden to