urnament of Tottenham._

In Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, there is a small alley or passage
leading into Queen Square, and rendered inaccessible to all but foot
passengers by some iron posts. The shops in this passage are of a
subdued exterior, and are overshadowed by a dingy old edifice dedicated
to St. George the Martyr, which seems to have begun its existence as a
rather handsome chapel, and to have improved itself, by a sort of
evolution, into a singularly ugly church.

Into this alley, one Saturday afternoon late in October, came a short
stout young man, with sandy hair, and a perpetual grin denoting
anticipation rather than enjoyment. Opposite the church he stopped at a
hairdresser's shop, which bore the name of Tweddle. The display in the
window was chastely severe; the conventional half-lady revolving slowly
in fatuous self-satisfaction, and the gentleman bearing a piebald beard
with waxen resignation, were not to be found in this shop-front, which
exhibited nothing but a small pile of toilet remedies and a few lengths
of hair of graduated tints. It was doubtful, perhaps, whether such
self-restraint on the part of its proprietor was the result of a
distaste for empty show, or a conviction that the neighbourhood did not
expect it.

Inside the shop there was nobody but a small boy, corking and labelling
bottles; but before he could answer any question as to the whereabouts
of his employer, that artist made his appearance. Leander Tweddle was
about thirty, of middle height, with a luxuriant head of brown hair, and
carefully-trimmed whiskers that curled round towards his upper lip,
where they spent themselves in a faint moustache. His eyes were rather
small, and his nose had a decided upward tendency; but, with his
pink-and-white complexion and compact well-made figure, he was far from
ill-looking, though he thought himself even farther.

"Well, Jauncy," he said, after the first greetings, "so you haven't
forgot our appointment?"

"Why, no," explained his friend; "but I never thought I should get away
in time to keep it. We've been in court all the morning with motions and
short causes, and the old Vice sat on till past three; and when we did
get back to chambers, Splitter kep' me there discussing an opinion of
his I couldn't agree with, and I was ever so long before I got him to
alter it my way."

For he was clerk to a barrister in good practice, and it was Jauncy's
pride to discover an occasional verbal sl