ark low
door-way, and get an odorous whiff from within, and one's olfactory
nerves would soon convince one of the contrary.

There was a flavor of everything there; a blended fragrance compounded
of strong cheese, herrings, and candles, with a suspicion of matches
and tarred wood, which to the uninitiated was singularly unpalatable,
and suggested to them to shake off the dust of Mrs. Watkins as soon as
possible.

To be sure this was only a trifle. To do her justice, Mrs. Watkins
drove a very thriving trade; the very carters had a partiality for the
shop, and would lurch in about twelve o'clock, with their pipes and
hob-nailed boots, for a twist of tobacco or a slice of cheese, and
crack clumsy jokes across the counter.

But, besides this, Mrs. Watkins had another source of profit that was
at once lucrative and respectable. She let lodgings.

And very genteel lodgings they were, with a private entrance in Beulah
Place, and a double door that excluded draughts and the heterogeneous
odors from the shop.

These lodgers of Mrs. Watkins were the talk of the neighborhood, and
many a passer-by looked curiously up at the bright windows and clean
white curtains, between which in summer time bloomed the loveliest
flowers, and the earliest snow-drops and crocuses in spring, in the
hope of seeing two fair faces which had rather haunted their memory
ever since they had first seen them.

It was six o'clock on the evening of a dreary November day. Watkins's
shop was empty, for the fog and the rawness and the cold had driven
folks early to their homes; and Mrs. Watkins herself, fortified with
strong tea and much buttered toast, was entering her profits on a
small greasy slate, and casting furtive glances every now and then
into the warm, snug parlor, where her nephew and factotum Tony was
refreshing himself in his turn from the small black teapot on the hob.

A fresh, wholesome-looking woman was Mrs. Watkins, with an honest,
reliable face and a twofold chin; but she had two peculiarities--she
always wore the stiffest and cleanest and most crackling of print
dresses, and her hair was nearly always pinned up in curl-papers under
her black cap.

Mrs. Watkins was engaged in jotting down small dabs of figures on the
slate and rubbing them out again, when the green baize swing-door
leading to the passage was pushed back, and a tall grave-looking woman
in black entered the shop and quietly approached the counter.

She was certainly