rity of Mr. Edward Freely.

The Yellow Coat School was a double source of profit to the calculating
confectioner; for he opened an eating-room for the superior workmen
employed on the new school, and he accommodated the pupils at the old
school by giving great attention to the fancy-sugar department. When I
think of the sweet-tasted swans and other ingenious white shapes crunched
by the small teeth of that rising generation, I am glad to remember that
a certain amount of calcareous food has been held good for young
creatures whose bones are not quite formed; for I have observed these
delicacies to have an inorganic flavour which would have recommended them
greatly to that young lady of the _Spectator's_ acquaintance who
habitually made her dessert on the stems of tobacco-pipes.

As for the confectioner himself, he made his way gradually into Grimworth
homes, as his commodities did, in spite of some initial repugnance.
Somehow or other, his reception as a guest seemed a thing that required
justifying, like the purchasing of his pastry. In the first place, he
was a stranger, and therefore open to suspicion; secondly, the
confectionery business was so entirely new at Grimworth, that its place
in the scale of rank had not been distinctly ascertained. There was no
doubt about drapers and grocers, when they came of good old Grimworth
families, like Mr. Luff and Mr. Prettyman: they visited with the
Palfreys, who farmed their own land, played many a game at whist with the
doctor, and condescended a little towards the timber-merchant, who had
lately taken to the coal-trade also, and had got new furniture; but
whether a confectioner should be admitted to this higher level of
respectability, or should be understood to find his associates among
butchers and bakers, was a new question on which tradition threw no
light. His being a bachelor was in his favour, and would perhaps have
been enough to turn the scale, even if Mr. Edward Freely's other personal
pretensions had been of an entirely insignificant cast. But so far from
this, it very soon appeared that he was a remarkable young man, who had
been in the West Indies, and had seen many wonders by sea and land, so
that he could charm the ears of Grimworth Desdemonas with stories of
strange fishes, especially sharks, which he had stabbed in the nick of
time by bravely plunging overboard just as the monster was turning on his
side to devour the cook's mate; of terrible fevers whi