I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my
dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in almost accidentally
upon my old friend and chum, Jack W----. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop
not a hundred miles from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes
in delicate odours, he passes his leisure hours--the hours when
commerce flags, and people have more pressing affairs to attend to
than the delectation of their nostrils--in the enthusiastic study of
art and _virtu_. His shop is hardly more crammed with bottles and
attar, soap, scents, and all the _etceteras_ of the toilet, than the
rest of his house with prints, pictures, carvings, and curiosities of
every sort. Jack and I went to school together, and sowed our slender
crop of wild oats together; and, indeed, in some sort have been
together ever since. We both have our own collections of rarities,
such as they are, and each criticises the other's new purchases. On
the present occasion there was a new Van Somebody's old painting
awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his door,
than starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell should
he be wanted, he hustled me up stairs, calling by the way to his
housekeeper, Mrs Jones--Jack is a bachelor--to bring up coffee for
two. I was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his newly-acquired
treasure, and was going to bounce unceremoniously into the old
lumber-room over the lobby to regale my sight with the delightful
confusion of his unarranged accumulations, when he pulled me forcibly
back by the coat-tail. 'Not there,' said Jack; 'you can't go there. Go
into my snuggery.'

'And why not there?' said I; jealous of some new purchase which I was
not to see.

'Because there's somebody ill there--it is a bedroom now: a poor girl;
she wanted a place to die in, poor thing, and I put her in there.'

'Who is she?--a relative?'

'No; I never saw her till Monday last. Sit down, I'll tell you how it
was. Set down the coffee, Mrs Jones, and just look in upon the
patient, will you? Sugar and cream? You know my weakness for the dead
wall in Lincoln's Inn Fields.' (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by
that wall, for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had
a hand in building it.) 'Well, I met with her there on Monday last.
She asked for nothing, but held out her hand, and as she did so the
tears streamed from her eyes on the pavement. The poor creature, it
was plain enough, was then dying;