t come to me.

"'Carrots' it is," she says, and down she sits just opposite to me, and
then she laughs.

I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and the more
frightened I looked the more she laughed till "Kipper" comes into the
room. There was nothing ghostly about him. I never see a man look more
as if he had backed the winner.

"Why, it's 'Enery," he says; and he gives me a slap on the back, as
knocks the life into me again.

"I heard you was dead," I says, still staring at her. "I read it in the
paper--'death of the Marchioness of Appleford.'"

"That's all right," she says. "The Marchioness of Appleford is as dead
as a door-nail, and a good job too. Mrs. Captain Kit's my name, nee
'Carrots.'"

"You said as 'ow I'd find someone to suit me 'fore long," says "Kipper"
to me, "and, by Jove! you were right; I 'ave. I was waiting till I found
something equal to her ladyship, and I'd 'ave 'ad to wait a long time,
I'm thinking, if I 'adn't come across this one 'ere"; and he tucks her up
under his arm just as I remember his doing that day he first brought her
into the coffee-shop, and Lord, what a long time ago that was!

* * * * *

That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I have,
at his request, substituted artificial names for real ones. For Henry
tells me that at Capetown Captain Kit's First-class Family and Commercial
Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is still a beautiful woman with
fine eyes and red hair, who might almost be taken for a duchess--until
she opens her mouth, when her accent is found to be still slightly
reminiscent of the Mile-End Road.

THE USES AND ABUSES OF JOSEPH.

"It is just the same with what you may call the human joints," observed
Henry. He was in one of his philosophic moods that evening. "It all
depends upon the cooking. I never see a youngster hanging up in the
refrigerator, as one may put it, but I says to myself: 'Now I wonder what
the cook is going to make of you! Will you be minced and devilled and
fricasseed till you are all sauce and no meat? Will you be hammered
tender and grilled over a slow fire till you are a blessing to mankind?
Or will you be spoilt in the boiling, and come out a stringy rag, an
immediate curse, and a permanent injury to those who have got to swallow
you?'

"There was a youngster I knew in my old coffee-shop days," continued
Henry, "that in the end came to be eaten by cannibals. At lea