t does a man good to see such energy on a warm morning."

"I've said all I'm a-goin' to say," exclaimed Mrs. Bubb, as she mopped
her forehead with a greasy apron. "I've warned her, that's all, and I
mean her well, little as she deserves it. Now, you, Moggie, don't stand
gahpin' there git them breakfast things washed up, can't you? It'll be
tea time agin before the beds is made. And what's come to _you_ this
morning?"

She addressed Mr. Gammon, who had seated himself on a corner of the
table, as if to watch and listen. He was a short, thick-set man with
dark, wiry hair roughened into innumerable curls, and similar whiskers
ending in a clean razor-line halfway down the cheek. His eyes were blue
and had a wondering innocence, which seemed partly the result of
facetious affectation, as also was the peculiar curve of his lips, ever
ready for joke or laughter. Yet the broad, mobile countenance had lines
of shrewdness and of strength, plain enough whenever it relapsed into
gravity, and the rude shaping of jaw and chin might have warned anyone
disposed to take advantage of the man's good nature. He wore a suit of
coarse tweed, a brown bowler hat, a blue cotton shirt with white stock
and horseshoe pin, rough brown leggings, tan boots, and in his hand was
a dog-whip. This costume signified that Mr. Gammon felt at leisure,
contrasting as strongly as possible with the garb in which he was wont
to go about his ordinary business--that of commercial traveller. He had
a liking for dogs, and kept a number of them in the back premises of an
inn at Dulwich, whither he usually repaired on Sundays. When at
Dulwich, Mr. Gammon fancied himself in completely rural seclusion; it
seemed to him that he had shaken off the dust of cities, that he was
far from the clamour of the crowd, amid peace and simplicity; hence his
rustic attire, in which he was fond of being photographed with dogs
about him. A true-born child of town, he would have found the real
country quite unendurable; in his doggy rambles about Dulwich he always
preferred a northerly direction, and was never so happy as when sitting
in the inn-parlour amid a group of friends whose voices rang the purest
Cockney. Even in his business he disliked engagements which took him
far from London; his "speciality" (as he would have said) was town
travel, and few men had had more varied experience in that region of
enterprise.

"I'm going to have a look at the bow-wows," he replied to Mrs. Bubb.