utters, sits paralysed in his grandfather chair, which has a
thin pad strung to the back and a flattened cushion on the seat, and
declares, vainly trying to keep his tongue inside his mouth, and with
his whole body shaken by paralysis, that he is happy and jolly.

"Happy and jolly," roars Joe, struggling with his frightful stammer. "It
'tain't no good bein' nuffin kelse. Why, I've been dead and pretty near
buried. In Charing-crost 'orspital; yerse! I heard 'em say, 'He's a
gonner,' and I couldn't give 'em the lie. I come to, wrapped up like a
mummy, and hollered so as they pretty near 'opped out of their skins!
Ho, I've had a terrible life! Run over by a horse and van. Knocked all
to pieces. Been to the bottom of the sea! Many a time. But here I am,
happy and jolly. What's the odds?" He goes off into such a fit of
laughter that the chair is shaken and he himself nearly suffocated by a
cough like an earthquake.

He looks extremely like one of those lay figures employed by
ventriloquists. He is a thin, flat, pasteboard-looking old fellow; his
trousers hang over the edge of his chair apparently empty of legs, and
his shirt and open waistcoat (he never wears a coat) are pressed flat
against the high back of the chair, apparently empty of trunk. His body
and his features are for ever on the jerk. His shoulders twitch. He is
for ever laughing and gurgling. He is for ever struggling to say
something important, ending in a great spluttering stammer and a roar of
tremendous laughter.

For all he is eighty-two years of age, his hair is yet thick, and the
blackness of it is of too stubborn an order ever to go more than
iron-grey. He has glassy eyes, puffed and bagged with flesh; heavy black
eyebrows half-way up his sloping forehead; a heavy black moustache under
his strong nose; a tongue several sizes too large for his mouth; and
under the mouth a chin which recedes so sharply that it becomes neck
before you are really aware that it is chin. He reminds us a little, as
he sits there laughing and chuckling, of early caricatures of Sir
Redvers Buller.

Opposite Old Joe sits Mr. Wells, a little old white-haired gentleman,
very spruce and tidy, with neatly clipped moustache and neatly pointed
beard, and peering little cloudy eyes which are sightless.

* * * * *

The two old gentlemen, as they are called, live together in a tiny
two-roomed house in a narrow flagged court which is generally strung
wi