nquired the driver.

'Who?' said Tom.

'Why them,' returned the driver.

His mind was so clearly running on the assumption of Tom's having come
to town to see an extensive circle of anxious relations and friends,
that it would have been pretty hard work to undeceive him. Tom did not
try. He cheerfully evaded the subject, and going into the Inn, fell fast
asleep before a fire in one of the public rooms opening from the yard.
When he awoke, the people in the house were all astir, so he washed and
dressed himself; to his great refreshment after the journey; and, it
being by that time eight o'clock, went forth at once to see his old
friend John.

John Westlock lived in Furnival's Inn, High Holborn, which was within a
quarter of an hour's walk of Tom's starting-point, but seemed a long way
off, by reason of his going two or three miles out of the straight road
to make a short cut. When at last he arrived outside John's door, two
stories up, he stood faltering with his hand upon the knocker, and
trembled from head to foot. For he was rendered very nervous by the
thought of having to relate what had fallen out between himself and
Pecksniff; and he had a misgiving that John would exult fearfully in the
disclosure.

'But it must be made,' thought Tom, 'sooner or later; and I had better
get it over.'

Rat tat.

'I am afraid that's not a London knock,' thought Tom. 'It didn't sound
bold. Perhaps that's the reason why nobody answers the door.'

It is quite certain that nobody came, and that Tom stood looking at the
knocker; wondering whereabouts in the neighbourhood a certain gentleman
resided, who was roaring out to somebody 'Come in!' with all his might.

'Bless my soul!' thought Tom at last. 'Perhaps he lives here, and is
calling to me. I never thought of that. Can I open the door from the
outside, I wonder. Yes, to be sure I can.'

To be sure he could, by turning the handle; and to be sure when he did
turn it the same voice came rushing out, crying 'Why don't you come
in? Come in, do you hear? What are you standing there for?'--quite
violently.

Tom stepped from the little passage into the room from which these
sounds proceeded, and had barely caught a glimpse of a gentleman in a
dressing-gown and slippers (with his boots beside him ready to put on),
sitting at his breakfast with a newspaper in his hand, when the said
gentleman, at the imminent hazard of oversetting his tea-table, made a
plunge at Tom, and hugged