, the journeyman to
scrape the old gentleman, and Newman Noggs to read last Sunday's paper,
all three in silence: when Miss Kenwigs uttered a shrill little scream,
and Newman, raising his eyes, saw that it had been elicited by the
circumstance of the old gentleman turning his head, and disclosing the
features of Mr Lillyvick the collector.

The features of Mr Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If ever
an old gentleman had made a point of appearing in public, shaved close
and clean, that old gentleman was Mr Lillyvick. If ever a collector had
borne himself like a collector, and assumed, before all men, a solemn
and portentous dignity as if he had the world on his books and it was
all two quarters in arrear, that collector was Mr Lillyvick. And
now, there he sat, with the remains of a beard at least a week old
encumbering his chin; a soiled and crumpled shirt-frill crouching, as
it were, upon his breast, instead of standing boldly out; a demeanour so
abashed and drooping, so despondent, and expressive of such humiliation,
grief, and shame; that if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers,
all of whom had had their water cut off for non-payment of the rate,
could have been concentrated in one body, that one body could hardly
have expressed such mortification and defeat as were now expressed in
the person of Mr Lillyvick the collector.

Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr Lillyvick groaned: then coughed to
hide it. But the groan was a full-sized groan, and the cough was but a
wheeze.

'Is anything the matter?' said Newman Noggs.

'Matter, sir!' cried Mr Lillyvick. 'The plug of life is dry, sir, and
but the mud is left.'

This speech--the style of which Newman attributed to Mr Lillyvick's
recent association with theatrical characters--not being quite
explanatory, Newman looked as if he were about to ask another question,
when Mr Lillyvick prevented him by shaking his hand mournfully, and then
waving his own.

'Let me be shaved!' said Mr Lillyvick. 'It shall be done before
Morleena; it IS Morleena, isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Newman.

'Kenwigses have got a boy, haven't they?' inquired the collector.

Again Newman said 'Yes.'

'Is it a nice boy?' demanded the collector.

'It ain't a very nasty one,' returned Newman, rather embarrassed by the
question.

'Susan Kenwigs used to say,' observed the collector, 'that if ever she
had another boy, she hoped it might be like me. Is this one like me, Mr
Noggs