othink: he sit there with his 'ead down, making belief
to be looking at a walnut. You might have bowled me over with a straw,"
said Mr. Higgs.

"Had he done anything very bad?" I asked.

"Not he, Mr. Dodsley!" cried the lady--it was so she had conceived my
name. "He never did anythink to call really wrong in his poor life. The
'ole affair was a disgrace. It was all rank favouritising."

"Mrs. 'Iggs! Mrs. 'Iggs!" cried the butler warningly.

"Well, what do I care?" retorted the lady, shaking her ringlets. "You
know it was, yourself, Mr. 'Iggs, and so did every member of the staff."

While I was getting these facts and opinions, I by no means neglected
the child. She was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the
corrupt age of seven, when half-a-crown appears about as large as a
saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling down, sixpence
in her money-box, and an American gold dollar which I happened to find
in my pocket, I bought the creature soul and body. She declared her
intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be
chidden by her sire for drawing comparisons between myself and her Uncle
William, highly damaging to the latter.

Dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet removed, when Miss Agnes
must needs climb into my lap with her stamp album, a relic of the
generosity of Uncle William. There are few things I despise more than
old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle (from the Carthew
Chillinghams down to the old gate-keeper's milk-cow in the lane)
contempt is far from being my first sentiment. But it seemed I was
doomed to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and, smothering a yawn,
I devoted myself once more to tread the well-known round. I fancy Uncle
William must have begun the collection himself and tired of it, for the
book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. There were the
varying shades of the English penny, Russians with the coloured heart,
old undecipherable Thurn-und-Taxis, obsolete triangular Cape of Good
Hopes, Swan Rivers with the Swan, and Guianas with the sailing ship.
Upon all these I looked with the eyes of a fish and the spirit of a
sheep; I think, indeed, I was at times asleep; and it was probably in
one of these moments that I capsized the album, and there fell from the
end of it, on the floor, a considerable number of what I believe to be
called "exchanges."

Here, against all probability, my chance had come to me; for as I