and a small boy with a large red head, and no nose to speak
of, and a very dirty boot on his left arm, appeared; who (being
surprised) rubbed the nose just mentioned with the back of a
shoe-brush, and said nothing.

"Still abed, my man?" asked Mr. Pecksniff.

"Still abed!" replied the boy. "I wish they was still abed. They're very
noisy abed; all calling for their boots at once. I thought you was the
paper, and wondered why you didn't shove yourself through the grating as
usual. What do you want?"

Considering his years, which were tender, the youth may be said to have
asked this question sternly, and in something of a defiant manner. But
Mr. Pecksniff, without taking offense at his bearing, put a card in his
hand, and bade him take that up-stairs, and show them in the meanwhile
into a room where there was a fire.

Surely there never was, in any other borough, city, or hamlet, in the
world, such a singular sort of a place as Todgers'. And surely London,
to judge from that part of it which hemmed Todgers' round, and hustled
it, and crushed it, and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, and
kept the air from it, and stood perpetually between it and the light,
was worthy of Todgers'.

There were more trucks near Todgers' than you would suppose a whole city
could ever need; not trucks at work but a vagabond race, forever
lounging in the narrow lanes before their masters' doors and stopping up
the pass; so that when a stray hackney-coach or lumbering wagon came
that way, they were the cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole
neighborhood, and made the very bells in the next church-tower ring
again. In the narrow dark streets near Todgers', wine-merchants and
wholesale dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own;
and, deep among the very foundations of these buildings, the ground was
undermined and burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by
rats, might be heard on a quiet Sunday, rattling their halters, as
disturbed spirits in tales of haunted houses are said to clank their
chains.

To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy and secret
existence near Todgers' would fill a goodly book; while a second volume
no less in size might be given to an account of the quaint old guests
who frequented their dimly-lighted parlors.

The top of the house was worthy of notice. There was a sort of terrace
on the roof, with posts and fragments of rotten lines, once intended to
d