the
drug-markets, as the beginning of a social chorus, his leading part in
the execution of which had led this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and
of which the whole expressive burden ran:

'Rumty iddity, row dow dow,
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.'

Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business, as
'Dear Rumty'; in answer to which, he sedately signed himself, 'Yours
truly, R. Wilfer.'

He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles.
Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both become absorbed in
Veneering, once their traveller or commission agent: who had signalized
his accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity
of plate-glass window and French-polished mahogany partition, and a
gleaming and enormous doorplate.

R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch of keys
in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for home. His home
was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by
fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge and that part of the Holloway
district in which he dwelt, was a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles
and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was
shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting
the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its
kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his
head.

'Ah me!' said he, 'what might have been is not what is!'

With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it
not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his
journey.

Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her lord being
cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the principle which
matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much given to tying up her head
in a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under the chin. This head-gear, in
conjunction with a pair of gloves worn within doors, she seemed to
consider as at once a kind of armour against misfortune (invariably
assuming it when in low spirits or difficulties), and as a species of
full dress. It was therefore with some sinking of the spirit that her
husband beheld her thus heroically attired, putting down her candle in
the little hall, and coming down the doorsteps through the little front
court to open the gate for him.

Something had gone wrong with the house-door, fo