ally interested in them."

"In what I have said already," replied Sainsbury, resuming his seat,
"I have told you all, or very nearly all, that I, or I believe any
body else, knows of them. My little information is chiefly acquired
from hearing the servants gossip about them; but I very well remember
that, on the first appearance of the Pair in this vicinity, they
excited a good deal of speculation and enquiry amongst every class in
Walworth. It is now more than eight years ago since this man's
predecessor--the purveyor, as he grandiloquently was wont to call
himself, of milk to this large district--died. His dairies, which I
fancy were lucrative things enough, were immediately sold, and taken
by a person who, we were informed, would not only continue to supply
Walworth with their produce, but, from motives of caprice or economy,
would deliver it himself. Accordingly, the man you have seen pass this
evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few
days, however, he came, attended by that mysterious female, dogged
precisely as you have seen him an hour ago, and at once the heart of
every cook and kitchen-maid in the parish was on fire with curiosity
and suspicion. From the kitchen the contagion spread to the
drawing-room, and commissions of enquiry, in the shape of tea-parties,
were held in every house relative to the strange milk-vender and his
stranger shadow. To those who asked him any questions on the matter,
and very few ventured to do so--for his manner, though civil, had
reserve and sullenness, and there was in his deportment a decent
propriety, that repulsed, or rather prevented, enquiry--he usually
answered that he 'knew nothing of the woman who followed him;' 'that
he dared to say it was from some whim;' 'that she was welcome to do so
if she pleased;' 'she had the same right of highway as any other
person,' and suchlike evasive replies."

"But his companion--I should rather say, his attendant--from her sex,
she would, at least, be something more communicative?"

"Not at all. She was very seldom spoken to upon any subject. She kept
aloof from all who seemed disposed to be inquisitive; and if she ever
came within range, as the sailors say, of a question, she never gave
an intelligible, or at least satisfactory, answer. Besides, as she was
never seen save in the track of him whom she lives but to pursue, her
own sex have had no opportunity of conciliating her into an
acquaintanceship, and t