ore unwonted still--there is a butterfly in the square--a real, live
butterfly! astray from flowers and sweets, and fluttering among the iron
heads of the dusty area railings.

But if there were not many matters immediately without the doors of
Cheeryble Brothers, to engage the attention or distract the thoughts of
the young clerk, there were not a few within, to interest and amuse him.
There was scarcely an object in the place, animate or inanimate, which
did not partake in some degree of the scrupulous method and punctuality
of Mr Timothy Linkinwater. Punctual as the counting-house dial, which he
maintained to be the best time-keeper in London next after the clock
of some old, hidden, unknown church hard by, (for Tim held the fabled
goodness of that at the Horse Guards to be a pleasant fiction, invented
by jealous West-enders,) the old clerk performed the minutest actions
of the day, and arranged the minutest articles in the little room, in a
precise and regular order, which could not have been exceeded if it had
actually been a real glass case, fitted with the choicest curiosities.
Paper, pens, ink, ruler, sealing-wax, wafers, pounce-box, string-box,
fire-box, Tim's hat, Tim's scrupulously-folded gloves, Tim's other
coat--looking precisely like a back view of himself as it hung against
the wall--all had their accustomed inches of space. Except the clock,
there was not such an accurate and unimpeachable instrument in existence
as the little thermometer which hung behind the door. There was not a
bird of such methodical and business-like habits in all the world, as
the blind blackbird, who dreamed and dozed away his days in a large
snug cage, and had lost his voice, from old age, years before Tim first
bought him. There was not such an eventful story in the whole range
of anecdote, as Tim could tell concerning the acquisition of that very
bird; how, compassionating his starved and suffering condition, he had
purchased him, with the view of humanely terminating his wretched life;
how he determined to wait three days and see whether the bird revived;
how, before half the time was out, the bird did revive; and how he
went on reviving and picking up his appetite and good looks until he
gradually became what--'what you see him now, sir,'--Tim would say,
glancing proudly at the cage. And with that, Tim would utter a melodious
chirrup, and cry 'Dick;' and Dick, who, for any sign of life he had
previously given, might have been