“I don’t know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light.” Mr Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot, beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he compares with Mr Wegg’s leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding- boot. “No, I don’t know how it is, but so it is. You have got a twist in that bone, to the best of my belief. I never saw the likes of you.”

Mr Wegg having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at the pattern with which it has been compared, makes the point:

“I’ll bet a pound that ain’t an English one!”

“An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it belongs to that French gentleman.”

As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr Wegg, the latter, with a slight start, looks round for “that French gentleman,” whom he at length descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike manner) by his ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour or a pair of stays.

“Oh!” says Mr Wegg, with a sort of sense of being introduced; “I dare say you were all right enough in your own country, but I hope no objections will be taken to my saying that the Frenchman was never yet born as I should wish to match.”

At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a boy follows it, who says, after having let it slam:

“Come for the stuffed canary.”

“It’s three and ninepence,” returns Venus; “have you got the money?”

The boy produces four shillings. Mr Venus, always in exceedingly low spirits and making whimpering sounds, peers about for the stuffed canary. On his taking the candle to assist his search, Mr Wegg observes that he has a convenient little shelf near his knees, exclusively appropriated to skeleton hands, which have very much the appearance of wanting to lay hold of him. From these Mr Venus rescues the canary in a glass case, and shows it to the boy.

“There!” he whimpers. “There’s animation! On a twig, making up his mind to hop! Take care of him; he’s a lovely specimen. — And three is four.”

The boy gathers up his change and has pulled the door open by a leather strap nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out:

“Stop him! Come back, you young villain! You’ve got a tooth among them halfpence.”

“How was I to know I’d got it? You giv it me. I don’t want none of your teeth; I’ve got enough of my own.” So the boy pipes, as he selects it from his change, and throws it on the counter.

“Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth,” Mr Venus retorts pathetically. “Don’t hit me because you see I’m down. I’m low enough without that. It dropped into the till, I suppose. They drop into everything. There was two in the coffee-pot at breakfast time. Molars.”

“Very well, then,” argues the boy, “what do you call names for?”

To which Mr Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair, and winking his weak eyes, “Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth; don’t hit me, because you see I’m down. You’ve no idea how small you’d come out, if I had the articulating of you.”

This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, for he goes out grumbling.