place was entirely deserted, and looked as dusty and dingy as if it
had been so for months. A rusty padlock was fastened on the door, ends
of discoloured blinds and curtains flapped drearily against the
half-opened upper windows, and the crooked holes cut in the closed
shutters below, were black with the darkness of the inside. Some of
the glass in the window he had so often watched, had been broken in the
rough hurry of the morning, and that room looked more deserted and dull
than any. A group of idle urchins had taken possession of the
door-steps; some were plying the knocker and listening with delighted
dread to the hollow sounds it spread through the dismantled house;
others were clustered about the keyhole, watching half in jest and half
in earnest for 'the ghost,' which an hour's gloom, added to the mystery
that hung about the late inhabitants, had already raised. Standing all
alone in the midst of the business and bustle of the street, the house
looked a picture of cold desolation; and Kit, who remembered the
cheerful fire that used to burn there on a winter's night and the no
less cheerful laugh that made the small room ring, turned quite
mournfully away.

It must be especially observed in justice to poor Kit that he was by no
means of a sentimental turn, and perhaps had never heard that adjective
in all his life. He was only a soft-hearted grateful fellow, and had
nothing genteel or polite about him; consequently, instead of going
home again, in his grief, to kick the children and abuse his mother
(for, when your finely strung people are out of sorts, they must have
everybody else unhappy likewise), he turned his thoughts to the vulgar
expedient of making them more comfortable if he could.

Bless us, what a number of gentlemen on horseback there were riding up
and down, and how few of them wanted their horses held! A good city
speculator or a parliamentary commissioner could have told to a
fraction, from the crowds that were cantering about, what sum of money
was realised in London, in the course of a year, by holding horses
alone. And undoubtedly it would have been a very large one, if only a
twentieth part of the gentlemen without grooms had had occasion to
alight; but they had not; and it is often an ill-natured circumstance
like this, which spoils the most ingenious estimate in the world.

Kit walked about, now with quick steps and now with slow; now lingering
as some rider slackened his horse's p