ome, we must be dodging."

"Aye," replied his heavy crony, "I suppose we must. Have you got any
browns (pence) about you, Paddy?"

"Yes," said the Hibernian, "I can _sthand_ a _quarthern_."

"Then, we'll go."

And accordingly they prepared, the sluggard in a soldier's flannel
jacket, and a tattered pair of _breeks_, which was all that he
considered requisite for the weather and his own particular
profession. Paddy, a lean, pale-faced lad of eighteen, whose features
bore the look of emaciation, from the continual use of tobacco--the
pipe or quid never being out of his mouth, save at meals, (a short
black stump now ornamented his jaws)--with a shirt upon his back that
had been as much acquainted with soap as the owner's skin, and a thin
pair of canvass trousers, was the finish complete to this vagabond's
costume. Away they went, in the true shipwrecked sailor-begging
style--their arms folded, bodies bent, and lifting their feet at every
step, as if they were afraid to touch the ground for cold, and which
contributed to give them that rocking gait so peculiar to the sons of
the ocean--their whole frames, too, shivering as if the frosty breath
of Old Winter was stealing through their veins:--the sluggard to whine
and cry for melting charity at the foot of Ludgate Hill, and Paddy, in
his shirt, to cadge, at ten o'clock at night, in the windiest nook on
Blackfriars Bridge.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.

A QUIET SCENE.

The kitchen was now nearly empty. A candle in a brass candlestick was
placed upon each table by the under deputy, which, with the help of a
good fire, made the room feel somewhat comfortable, and even cheerful.
Some two or three individuals still continued to shuffle the cards;
and as many women placed themselves by the fire, with their legs
stretched upon the forms, to smoke and beguile away the time, until
"their men," as they termed them, would come back; while perhaps two
or three of the "swinish multitude" might be heard snoring away their
stimulus in a corner, in sounds both loud and deep.

On a Saturday evening, from the hours of eight and nine, until eleven,
every cadging house is in general particularly quiet, for the reasons
we have already stated; none ever going out to work on a Sunday (the
sweepers of crossings, of course, excepted), but those who are
compelled from sheer necessity.

The room for some time enjoyed a tolerable degree of stillness. The
master and an old female do