t particularly care to be
troubled about them by strangers."

I made the meekest possible apology for my intrusion, but the outraged
Grewter was not appeased.

"Your best apology will be not doing it again," he replied. "Those that
know my habits know that I take half an hour's nap after dinner. My
constitution requires it, or I shouldn't take it. If I didn't happen to
have a strange warehouseman on my premises, you wouldn't have been
allowed to disturb me two afternoons running."

Finding Mr. Grewter unappeasable, I left him, and went to seek a more
placable spirit in the shape of Anthony Sparsfield, carver and gilder,
of Barbican.

I found the establishment of Sparsfield and Son, carvers and gilders.
It was a low dark shop, in the window of which were exhibited two or
three handsomely carved frames, very much the worse for flies, and one
oil-painting, of a mysterious and Rembrandtish character. The
old-established air that pervaded almost all the shops in this
neighbourhood was peculiarly apparent in the Sparsfield establishment.

In the shop I found a mild-faced man of about forty engaged in
conversation with a customer. I waited patiently while the customer
finished a minute description of the kind of frame he wanted made for a
set of proof engravings after Landseer; and when the customer had
departed, I asked the mild-faced man if I could see Mr. Sparsfield.

"I am Mr. Sparsfield," he replied politely.

"Not Mr. Anthony Sparsfield?"

"Yes, my name is Anthony."

"I was given to understand that Mr. Anthony Sparsfield was a much older
person."

"O, I suppose you mean my father," replied the mild-faced man. "My
father is advanced in years, and does very little in the business
nowadays; not but what his head is as clear as ever it was, and there
are some of our old customers like to see him when they give an order."

This sounded hopeful. I told Mr. Sparsfield the younger that I was not
a customer, and then proceeded to state the nature of my business. I
found him as courteous as Mr. Grewter had been disobliging.

"Me and father are old-fashioned people," he said; "and we're not above
living over our place of business, which most of the Barbican
tradespeople are nowadays. The old gentleman is taking tea in the
parlour upstairs at this present moment, and if you don't mind stepping
up to him, I'm sure he'll be proud to give you any information he can.
He likes talking of old times."

This was the sort of