d, but it had the attraction for him which it has for the worst of
the solitary members of the drunken tribe. It may be the companionship
of the nightly stir, or it may be the companionship of the gin and
beer that slop about among carters and hucksters, or it may be the
companionship of the trodden vegetable refuse which is so like their own
dress that perhaps they take the Market for a great wardrobe; but be
it what it may, you shall see no such individual drunkards on doorsteps
anywhere, as there. Of dozing women-drunkards especially, you shall come
upon such specimens there, in the morning sunlight, as you might
seek out of doors in vain through London. Such stale vapid rejected
cabbage-leaf and cabbage-stalk dress, such damaged-orange countenance,
such squashed pulp of humanity, are open to the day nowhere else. So,
the attraction of the Market drew Mr Dolls to it, and he had out his two
fits of trembles and horrors in a doorway on which a woman had had out
her sodden nap a few hours before.

There is a swarm of young savages always flitting about this same place,
creeping off with fragments of orange-chests, and mouldy litter--Heaven
knows into what holes they can convey them, having no home!--whose bare
feet fall with a blunt dull softness on the pavement as the policeman
hunts them, and who are (perhaps for that reason) little heard by
the Powers that be, whereas in top-boots they would make a deafening
clatter. These, delighting in the trembles and the horrors of Mr Dolls,
as in a gratuitous drama, flocked about him in his doorway, butted
at him, leaped at him, and pelted him. Hence, when he came out of
his invalid retirement and shook off that ragged train, he was much
bespattered, and in worse case than ever. But, not yet at his worst;
for, going into a public-house, and being supplied in stress of business
with his rum, and seeking to vanish without payment, he was collared,
searched, found penniless, and admonished not to try that again,
by having a pail of dirty water cast over him. This application
superinduced another fit of the trembles; after which Mr Dolls, as
finding himself in good cue for making a call on a professional friend,
addressed himself to the Temple.

There was nobody at the chambers but Young Blight. That discreet youth,
sensible of a certain incongruity in the association of such a
client with the business that might be coming some day, with the best
intentions temporized with Dolls, a