s,
and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up
heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights,
and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to
scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses
of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares
he dealt in, by a charcoal-stove, made of old bricks, was a
gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened
himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of
miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all
the luxury of calm retirement.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a
woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely
entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was
closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by
the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old
man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered
first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the
undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a
chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!"

"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing his
pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour. You were made free of it
long ago, you know; and the other two ain't strangers. Stop till I
shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty
bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure
there's no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable to
our calling, we're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the
parlour."

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked
the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky
lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his
mouth again.

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle
on the floor and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing
her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other
two.

"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every
person has a right to take care of themselves. _He_ always did!"

"That's true