nly in the little room, and on the panes of window-glass in the door,
and on the curtain half drawn across them, but in the little shop
beyond. A little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of
its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as
accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap,
pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites,
bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth-stones, salt, vinegar,
blacking, red herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom ketchup, stay-laces,
loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate-pencils; everything was
fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles
were in its net.

Glancing at such of these items as were visible in the shining of the
blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of two smoky lamps which burnt but
dimly in the shop itself, as though its plethora sat heavy on their
lungs; and glancing, then, at one of the two faces by the parlor-fire,
Trotty had small difficulty in recognizing in the stout old lady, Mrs.
Chickenstalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the days when he
had known her as established in the general line, and having a small
balance against him in her books.

The features of her companion were less easy to him. The great broad
chin, with creases in it large enough to hide a finger in; the
astonished eyes, that seemed to expostulate with themselves for sinking
deeper and deeper into the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose
afflicted with that disordered action of its functions which is
generally termed The Snuffles; the short thick throat and laboring
chest, with other beauties of the like description, though calculated to
impress the memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he had ever
known: and yet he had some recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs.
Chickenstalker's partner in the general line, and in the crooked and
eccentric line of life, he recognized the former porter of Sir Joseph
Bowley; an apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty's
mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by giving him admission to the
mansion where he had confessed his obligations to that lady, and drawn
on his unlucky head such grave reproach.

Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes he
had seen; but association is very strong sometimes; and he looked
involuntarily behind the parlor-door, where the accounts of credit
customers