t, and if you like to sit by the
fire and smoke a pipe and drink a glass whilst I mend a stocking or
two, you'll be company."

So we sat together by Master Watts's fire, and whilst I drank his
porter and smoked my own tobacco, the matron mended her stockings, and
told me a good deal about the trials she had gone through in a life
that would never again see its sixtieth year. Forty years she had
spent under the roof of Watts's, and knew all about the old man's
will, and how he ordered that after the re-marriage or the death of
his wife, his principal dwelling-house, called Satis, on Boley Hill,
with the house adjoining, the closes, orchards, and appurtenances,
his plate and his furniture, should be sold, and the proceeds be
placed out at usury by the Mayor and citizens of Rochester for the
perpetual support of an alms-house then erected and standing near
the Market Cross; and how he further ordained that there should be
added thereto six rooms, "with a chimney in each," and with
convenient places for six good mattresses or flock beds, and other
good and sufficient furniture for the lodgment of poor wayfarers
for a single night.

Had she many people come to see the quaint old place beside those
whom the police-sergeant brought every night?

Not many. The visitors' book had been twenty years in the house,
and it was not nearly full of names.

I took up the book, and carelessly turning back the leaves came upon
the signature "Charles Dickens," with "Mark Lemon" written underneath.

I know Dickens pretty well--his books, I mean, of course--and said,
with a gratified start, "Ha! has Dickens been here?"

"Yes, he has," said the matron, in her sharpest tones, "and a pretty
pack of lies he told about it. Stop a bit."

I stopped accordingly whilst the old lady flew out of the room, and
flying back again with a well-worn pamphlet in her hand, shoved it at
me, saying, "Read that." I opened it, and found it to be the Christmas
number of _Household Words_ for 1854. It was entitled "The Seven Poor
Travellers," and the opening chapter, in Mr Dickens's well-known style,
described by name, and in detail, the very house in which I had taken
my supper.

It was a charming narrative, I, poor waif and stray, felt a strong
personal regard for the great novelist as I read the cheery story in
which he sets forth how, calling at the house on the afternoon before
Christmas-day, he obtained permission to give a Christmas feast to the
six