of the table
surrounded by a crowd of jovial cronies. I lingered for a while watching
the scene. It made the world appear a less sombre dwelling-place than I
had sometimes pictured it.

I determined, on my return to London, to look him up, and accordingly one
evening started to find the little by-street off the Mile End Road in
which he lived. As I turned the corner he drove up in his dog-cart; it
was a smart turn-out. On the seat beside him sat a neat, withered little
old woman, whom he introduced to me as his mother.

"I tell 'im it's a fine gell as 'e oughter 'ave up 'ere aside 'im," said
the old lady, preparing to dismount, "an old woman like me takes all the
paint off the show."

"Get along with yer," he replied laughingly, jumping down and handing the
reins to the lad who had been waiting, "you could give some of the young
uns points yet, mother. I allus promised the old lady as she should ride
behind her own 'oss one day," he continued, turning to me, "didn't I,
mother?"

"Ay, ay," replied the old soul, as she hobbled nimbly up the steps,
"ye're a good son, Jack, ye're a good son."

He led the way into the parlour. As he entered every face lightened up
with pleasure, a harmony of joyous welcome greeted him. The old hard
world had been shut out with the slam of the front door. I seemed to
have wandered into Dickensland. The red-faced man with the small
twinkling eyes and the lungs of leather loomed before me, a large, fat
household fairy. From his capacious pockets came forth tobacco for the
old father; a huge bunch of hot-house grapes for a neighbour's sickly
child, who was stopping with them; a book of Henty's--beloved of boys--for
a noisy youngster who called him "uncle"; a bottle of port wine for a
wan, elderly woman with a swollen face--his widowed sister-in-law, as I
subsequently learned; sweets enough for the baby (whose baby I don't
know) to make it sick for a week; and a roll of music for his youngest
sister.

"We're a-going to make a lady of her," he said, drawing the child's shy
face against his gaudy waistcoat, and running his coarse hand through her
pretty curls; "and she shall marry a jockey when she grows up."

After supper he brewed some excellent whisky punch, and insisted upon the
old lady joining us, which she eventually did with much coughing and
protestation; but I noticed that she finished the tumblerful. For the
children he concocted a marvellous mixture, which he called a