ock clause cannot be relied on to bring many fish to
the net, but it is supposed to give an air of respectability to
the advertisement.

The Cash Customer was, perhaps, an exception to this general
rule, and feeling that he would on the whole rather like a
"speedy marriage," and wouldn't so much mind the "extra charge,"
he went, in cold blood, with this matrimonial intent to the
street, found the number, and heroically entered the house in the
very face of a threatened unclean baptism from the upper windows.

His timid knock at the door of the room was answered by a sturdy
"Come in," from the inside; hat deferentially in hand he modestly
entered, and was received by a fat woman with a bust of
proportions exceeding those of Mrs. Merdle in "Little Dorrit,"
and who was attired in a dress which may have been clean in the
earlier years of its history, though the supposition is
exceedingly apocryphal. This lady pointed to a chair, and then
composedly seated herself and resumed her explorations with a
comb, in the hair of a vicious boy of about three years old, the
eldest scion of Madame Leander.

Her enthusiasm in the cause of entomological science was too
ardent to be quenched by the mere presence of an observer, and
she continued to hunt her insect prey with all the ardor of a
she-Nimrod, and with a zeal that was rewarded by a brilliant
success. The youth, over whose fertile head the game seemed to
rove and range in countless numbers, was somewhat restless under
the operation, and oftentimes disturbed the eager sportswoman by
manifesting a desire to run into the street and carry the
hunting-ground with him, and was as often recalled to a sense of
the proprieties by a few judicious slaps, which he stoically
endured without a whimper, being evidently used to it.

This feminine lover of the chase, this Diana of the fiery scalp,
looked up from her occupations long enough to say to her visitor
that Madame Lent would soon be disengaged. Meantime, he made a
careful survey of the premises.

Two chairs, an old lounge with its dingy red cover fastened on
with pins, and a trunk covered with an old bit of carpet, were
the accommodations for seating visitors. A cooking-stove, and a
suspicious-looking wash-bowl which stood in the corner of the
room, without a pitcher, were probably for the accommodation of
the Madame and the lady with the comb. On the shabby lounge sat a
stolid-looking Irish girl, who was waiting her turn to have