e Dragon!' repeated Tom, staring alternately at his friend and
his sister.

'Aye, think of that! He spoke as familiarly of the Blue Dragon, I give
you my word, as if he had been Mark Tapley. I opened my eyes, I can
tell you, when he did so; but I could not fancy I had ever seen the man
before, although he said with a smile, "You know the Blue Dragon, Mr
Westlock; you kept it up there, once or twice, yourself." Kept it up
there! So I did. You remember, Tom?'

Tom nodded with great significance, and, falling into a state of deeper
perplexity than before, observed that this was the most unaccountable
and extraordinary circumstance he had ever heard of in his life.

'Unaccountable?' his friend repeated. 'I became afraid of the man.
Though it was broad day, and bright sunshine, I was positively afraid
of him. I declare I half suspected him to be a supernatural visitor,
and not a mortal, until he took out a common-place description of
pocket-book, and handed me this card.'

'Mr Fips,' said Tom, reading it aloud. 'Austin Friars. Austin Friars
sounds ghostly, John.'

'Fips don't, I think,' was John's reply. 'But there he lives, Tom, and
there he expects us to call this morning. And now you know as much of
this strange incident as I do, upon my honour.'

Tom's face, between his exultation in the hundred pounds a year, and
his wonder at this narration, was only to be equalled by the face of his
sister, on which there sat the very best expression of blooming surprise
that any painter could have wished to see. What the beef-steak pudding
would have come to, if it had not been by this time finished, astrology
itself could hardly determine.

'Tom,' said Ruth, after a little hesitation, 'perhaps Mr Westlock, in
his friendship for you, knows more of this than he chooses to tell.'

'No, indeed!' cried John, eagerly. 'It is not so, I assure you. I wish
it were. I cannot take credit to myself, Miss Pinch, for any such thing.
All that I know, or, so far as I can judge, am likely to know, I have
told you.'

'Couldn't you know more, if you thought proper?' said Ruth, scraping the
pie-board industriously.

'No,' retorted John. 'Indeed, no. It is very ungenerous in you to be so
suspicious of me when I repose implicit faith in you. I have unbounded
confidence in the pudding, Miss Pinch.'

She laughed at this, but they soon got back into a serious vein, and
discussed the subject with profound gravity. Whatever else was obscure
in t