They were still debating this point when a shadow darkened the entry, and the glass door was opened by a messenger who brought a letter unceremoniously addressed, “Riah.” To which he said there was an answer wanted.

The letter, which was scrawled in pencil uphill and downhill and round crooked corners, ran thus:

“OLD RIAH,

“F.”

The dolls’ dressmaker found it delicious to trace the screaming and smarting of Little Eyes in the distorted writing of this epistle. She laughed over it and jeered at it in a convenient corner (to the great astonishment of the messenger) while the old man got his few goods together in a black bag. That done, the shutters of the upper windows closed, and the office blind pulled down, they issued forth upon the steps with the attendant messenger. There, while Miss Jenny held the bag, the old man locked the house door, and handed over the key to him; who at once retired with the same.

“Well, godmother,” said Miss Wren, as they remained upon the steps together, looking at one another. “And so you’re thrown upon the world!”

“It would appear so, Jenny, and somewhat suddenly.”

“Where are you going to seek your fortune?” asked Miss Wren.

The old man smiled, but looked about him with a look of having lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls’ dressmaker.

“Verily, Jenny,” said he, “the question is to the purpose, and more easily asked than answered. But as I have experience of the ready goodwill and good help of those who have given occupation to Lizzie, I think I will seek them out for myself.”

“On foot?” asked Miss Wren, with a chop.

“Ay!” said the old man. “Have I not my staff?”

It was exactly because he had his staff, and presented so quaint an aspect, that she mistrusted his making the journey.

“The best thing you can do,” said Jenny, “for the time being, at all events, is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody’s there but my bad child, and Lizzie’s lodging stands empty.” The old man when satisfied that no inconvenience could be entailed on any one by his compliance, readily complied; and the singularly-assorted couple once more went through the streets together.

Now, the bad child having been strictly charged by his parent to remain at home in her absence, of course went out; and, being in the very last stage of mental decrepitude, went out with two objects; firstly, to establish a claim he conceived himself to have upon any licensed victualler living, to be supplied with threepennyworth of rum for nothing; and secondly, to bestow some maudlin remorse on Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it. Stumblingly pursuing these two designs — they both meant rum, the only meaning of which he was capable — the degraded creature staggered into Covent Garden Market and there bivouacked, to have an attack of the trembles succeeded by an attack of the horrors, in a doorway.