ng, and muttered faintly,

'There's another!'

Up went the single gentleman's window directly.

'There's another,' repeated Brass; 'and if I could get a break and four
blood horses to cut into the Marks when the crowd is at its thickest,
I'd give eighteen-pence and never grudge it!'

The distant squeak was heard again. The single gentleman's door burst
open. He ran violently down the stairs, out into the street, and so
past the window, without any hat, towards the quarter whence the sound
proceeded--bent, no doubt, upon securing the strangers' services
directly.

'I wish I only knew who his friends were,' muttered Sampson, filling
his pocket with papers; 'if they'd just get up a pretty little
Commission de lunatico at the Gray's Inn Coffee House and give me the
job, I'd be content to have the lodgings empty for one while, at all
events.'

With which words, and knocking his hat over his eyes as if for the
purpose of shutting out even a glimpse of the dreadful visitation, Mr
Brass rushed from the house and hurried away.

As Mr Swiveller was decidedly favourable to these performances, upon
the ground that looking at a Punch, or indeed looking at anything out
of window, was better than working; and as he had been, for this
reason, at some pains to awaken in his fellow clerk a sense of their
beauties and manifold deserts; both he and Miss Sally rose as with one
accord and took up their positions at the window: upon the sill
whereof, as in a post of honour, sundry young ladies and gentlemen who
were employed in the dry nurture of babies, and who made a point of
being present, with their young charges, on such occasions, had already
established themselves as comfortably as the circumstances would allow.

The glass being dim, Mr Swiveller, agreeably to a friendly custom which
he had established between them, hitched off the brown head-dress from
Miss Sally's head, and dusted it carefully therewith. By the time he
had handed it back, and its beautiful wearer had put it on again (which
she did with perfect composure and indifference), the lodger returned
with the show and showmen at his heels, and a strong addition to the
body of spectators. The exhibitor disappeared with all speed behind
the drapery; and his partner, stationing himself by the side of the
Theatre, surveyed the audience with a remarkable expression of
melancholy, which became more remarkable still when he breathed a
hornpipe tune into that sweet musi