l, Roman cameos, Geneva
jewellery, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope himself,
and an infinite variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of
a multitude of places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to
a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair
like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish
that every holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is
now called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of these pictorial
acquisitions Mr Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he
said, except of what pleased himself; he had picked them up, dirt-cheap,
and people had considered them rather fine. One man, who at any rate
ought to know something of the subject, had declared that 'Sage,
Reading' (a specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a
swan's-down tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like
rich pie-crust), to be a fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo
there, you would judge for yourself; if it were not his later
manner, the question was, Who was it? Titian, that might or might not
be--perhaps he had only touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn't
touched it, but Mr Meagles rather declined to overhear the remark.

When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own
snug room overlooking the lawn, which was fitted up in part like a
dressing-room and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of
counter-desk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop
for shovelling out money.

'Here they are, you see,' said Mr Meagles. 'I stood behind these two
articles five-and-thirty years running, when I no more thought of
gadding about than I now think of--staying at home. When I left the Bank
for good, I asked for them, and brought them away with me.

I mention it at once, or you might suppose that I sit in my
counting-house (as Pet says I do), like the king in the poem of the
four-and-twenty blackbirds, counting out my money.'

Clennam's eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two
pretty little girls with their arms entwined. 'Yes, Clennam,' said
Mr Meagles, in a lower voice. 'There they both are. It was taken some
seventeen years ago. As I often say to Mother, they were babies then.'

'Their names?' said Arthur.

'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's name is
Minnie; her sister's Lillie.'

'Should you have known,