Swiveller was wondering whether this might be another Miss Brass, twin
sister to the Dragon, when there came a rapping of knuckles at the
office door.

'Come in!' said Dick. 'Don't stand upon ceremony. The business will
get rather complicated if I've many more customers. Come in!'

'Oh, please,' said a little voice very low down in the doorway, 'will
you come and show the lodgings?'

Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a
dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her
face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.

'Why, who are you?' said Dick.

To which the only reply was, 'Oh, please will you come and show the
lodgings?'

There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner.
She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid
of Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.

'I hav'n't got anything to do with the lodgings,' said Dick. 'Tell 'em
to call again.'

'Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings,' returned the
girl; 'It's eighteen shillings a week and us finding plate and linen.
Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a
day.'

'Why don't you show 'em yourself? You seem to know all about 'em,'
said Dick.

'Miss Sally said I wasn't to, because people wouldn't believe the
attendance was good if they saw how small I was first.'

'Well, but they'll see how small you are afterwards, won't they?' said
Dick.

'Ah! But then they'll have taken 'em for a fortnight certain,' replied
the child with a shrewd look; 'and people don't like moving when
they're once settled.'

'This is a queer sort of thing,' muttered Dick, rising. 'What do you
mean to say you are--the cook?'

'Yes, I do plain cooking;' replied the child. 'I'm housemaid too; I do
all the work of the house.'

'I suppose Brass and the Dragon and I do the dirtiest part of it,'
thought Dick. And he might have thought much more, being in a doubtful
and hesitating mood, but that the girl again urged her request, and
certain mysterious bumping sounds on the passage and staircase seemed
to give note of the applicant's impatience. Richard Swiveller,
therefore, sticking a pen behind each ear, and carrying another in his
mouth as a token of his great importance and devotion to business,
hurried out to meet and treat with the single gentleman.

He was a little surprised to perceive that the bumping sounds were