heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.

Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond Street
in a fury. "I WILL know where the girl lives!" swore he. "I'll spend a
five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where she lives!"

"THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!" said a little grave low voice, all
of a sudden, by his side. "Pooh! what's money to you?"

Walker looked down: it was Tom Dale.

Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an apple,
and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock, and always
two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a little brown
frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he went PAPPING down
the street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody met him every day, and
he knew everything that everybody ever did; though nobody ever knew what
HE did. He was, they say, a hundred years old, and had never dined at
his own charge once in those hundred years. He looked like a figure out
of a waxwork, with glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with
a grin; he knew what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and
what everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was
the receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street
to Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the
"notorieties" of the town, and the private histories of each. That is,
he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of truth and
memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the most benevolent
man in the universe, and never saw you without telling you everything
most cruel of your neighbour, and when he left you he went to do the
same kind turn by yourself.

"Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?" said little Tom Dale, who had
just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an opera-ticket.
"You make it in bushels in the City, you know you do---in thousands.
I saw you go into Eglantine's. Fine business that; finest in London.
Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy. I can't wash with such.
Thousands a year that man has made--hasn't he?"

"Upon my word, Tom, I don't know," says the Captain.

"YOU not know? Don't tell me. You know everything--you agents. You KNOW
he makes five thousand a year--ay, and might make ten, but you know why
he don't."

"Indeed I don't."

"Nonsense. Don't humbug a poor old fellow like me. Jews--Amos--fifty per
cent., ay? Why can't he get his money from a g