f I was, as you may say, swelling all over. I'll walk
the streets all night: I couldn't sleep a wink for the life of me! I'll
walk about till the shop opens. Oh, faugh! how nasty! Confound the shop,
and Tag-rag, and everything and everybody in it! Thirty-five pounds a
year? See if I won't spend as much in cigars the first month!"

"Cigars! Is that your go? Now, _I_ should take lessons in boxing, to
begin with. It's a deuced high thing, you may depend upon it, and you
can't be fit company for swells without it, Tit! You can't, by Jove!"

"Whatever you like, whatever you like, Hucky!" cried Titmouse--adding,
in a sort of ecstasy, "I'm sorry to say it, but how _precious_ lucky
that my father and mother's dead, and that I'm an only
child--too-ra-laddy, too-ra-laddy!" Here he took such a sudden leap,
that I am sorry to say he split his trousers very awkwardly, and that
sobered him for a moment, while they made arrangements for cobbling it
up as well as might be, with a needle and thread which Huckaback always
had by him.

"We're rather jumping in the dark a-bit, aren't we, Tit?" inquired
Huckaback, while his companion was repairing the breach. "Let's look
what it all means--here it is." He read it all aloud again--"'_greatest
possible importance_!'--what _can it_ mean? Why the deuce couldn't they
speak out plainly?"

"What! in a newspaper? Lord, Hucky! how many Titmouses would start up on
all sides, if there isn't some already indeed! I wonder what '_greatest
possible importance_' can mean, now!"

"Some one's left you an awful lot of money, of course"----

"It's too good to be true"----

"Or you may have made a _smite_; you a'n't such a bad-looking fellow,
when you're dressed as you are now--you a'n't indeed, Titty!" Mr.
Titmouse was quite flustered with the mere supposition, and also looked
as sheepish as his features would admit of.

"E-e-e-eh, Hucky! how ve-ry silly you are!" he simpered.

"Or you may be found out heir to some great property, and all that kind
of thing.--But when do you intend to go to Messrs. What's-their-name? I
should say, the sooner the better. Come, you've stitched them trousers
well enough, now; they'll hold you till you get home, (you do brace up
uncommon tight!) and I'd take off my straps, if I was you. Why shouldn't
we go to these gents now? Ah, here they are--Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and
Snap, solicitors."

"I wonder if they're great men? Did you ever hear of them before?"

"Haven't I