es.

"Stoop, if you please, sir."

"Very good. Stoop, I think I can find some work for you behind the
scenes to-night. Can you turn a crank?"

"I've done it to grindstones, sir."

"It's the same principle," said Tiffles, laughing. "I'll engage you."

The idiot took off his greasy cap, and swung it in the air with joy. A
smile irradiated his great, coarse face, and his small eyes twinkled.
"Gosh golly!" he cried; "I'm goin' to be one of the performers. I'm
so glad!"

He said this, in a spirit of juvenile exultation, to the dozen boys who
stood gaping in at the doorway. This innocent bit of boasting provoked
their derisive laughter, and a quantity of playful epithets and
nicknames, which the idiot endured with marvellous patience, until one
dirty little boy put the thumb of his left hand to his nose, twirled the
fingers, and said, "Boo! boo! boo!" This act had the same effect on poor
Stoop as the shaking of a red handkerchief at a bull. It enraged him. He
sprang at the youth, and, but for the sudden closing of the door by the
offender, who had judiciously kept a hand on the knob, would have
chastised him on the spot.

The door not only arrested his progress, but suddenly checked his wrath.
"I'm very sorry, indeed, Professor," said he; "but Gorrifus! it makes
me so mad!"

Messrs. Boolpin and Persimmon laughed heartily. "He's a perfect idiot,
you see," remarked the former. "Coming the nose system at him always
makes him mad."

Tiffles did not understand how that was any proof of idiocy; but, to
prevent the recurrence of any difficulty between his new assistant and
the populace of small boys, he thought it best to take possession of the
hall, and lock the door. He therefore signified to Mr. Boolpin that they
would at once proceed to put up the panorama. Tiffles threw off his
coat, thereby intimating that he would go to work at once.

Messrs. Boolpin and Persimmon inquired, as a matter of form, whether
their further assistance was needed, and were answered in the negative.
Whereupon they retired--Mr. Boolpin uttering a farewell caution against
driving more nails in the wall than were necessary, and not to cut the
floor under any circumstances--and the panorama and its adherents were
left alone.

Mr. Boolpin had driven the uproarious boys before him with his pestle,
administering smart taps to the reluctant ones. Tiffles suffered no
further annoyance from them that day, save an occasional "Boo! boo!"
shouted thr