nstigated by a jerry-builder,
had added a storey and removed the tiled roofs whose garrets were every
bit as good as the jerry-built rooms that took their place. Sapp himself
may have done it--one knows nothing of his principles--and at the same
time in a burst of overweening vanity called his cottages his Court. But
one rather likes to think that Sapp was with his forbears when this came
about, when the wall was built up opposite, and the cottages could no
longer throw their dust everywhere, but had to resort to a common
dustbin at the end of the Court, which smelt so you could smell it quite
plain across the wall when the lid was off. That dustbin was the outward
and visible sign of the decadence of Sapp.

CHAPTER I

OF DAVE AND DOLLY WARDLE AND THEIR UNCLE MOSES, WHO HAD BEEN A
PRIZEFIGHTER, AND THEIR AUNT M'RIAR, WHO KEPT AN EYE ON THEM. OF
DAVE'S SERVICES TO THE PUBLIC, AND OF ANOTHER PUBLIC THAT NEARLY
MADE UNCLE MO BANKRUPT. OF HIS PAST BATTLES, NOTABLY ONE WITH A
SWEEP. OF MRS. PRICHARD AND MRS. BURR, WHO LIVED UPSTAIRS. OF A BAD
ACCIDENT THAT BEFELL DAVE, AND OF SIMEON STYLITES. HOW UNCLE MO
STRAPPED UP DAVE'S HEAD WITH DIACHYLUM BOUGHT BY A VERY BAD BOY,
MICHAEL RAGSTROAR, THE LIKE OF WHOM YOU NEVER! OF THE JUDGEMENT OF
SOLOMON, AND DAVE'S CAT

In the last house down the Court, the one that was so handy to the
dustbin, lived a very small boy and a still smaller sister. There were
other members of the household--to wit, their Uncle Moses and their Aunt
M'riar, who were not husband and wife, but respectively brother and
sister of Dave's father and mother. Uncle Moses' name was Wardle, Aunt
M'riar's that of a deceased or vanished husband. But Sapps Court was
never prepared to say offhand what this name was, and "Aunt M'riar" was
universal. So indeed was "Uncle Mo"; but, as No. 7 had been spoken of as
"Wardle's" since his brother took the lower half of the house for
himself and his first wife, with whom he had lived there fifteen years,
the name Wardle had come to be the name of the house. This brother had
been some ten years younger than Moses, and had had apparently more than
his fair share of the family weddings; as "old Mo," if he ever was
married, had kept the lady secret; from his brother's family certainly,
and presumably from the rest of the world.

Our little boy was the sort of boy you were sorry was ever going to be
eleven, because at five years a