rets, and
inquired, in a loud voice, whether Mr Noggs had a light.

The sounds that came back were stifled by the lath and plaster, and it
seemed moreover as though the speaker had uttered them from the interior
of a mug or other drinking vessel; but they were in the voice of Newman,
and conveyed a reply in the affirmative.

'A nasty night, Mr Noggs!' said the man in the nightcap, stepping in to
light his candle.

'Does it rain?' asked Newman.

'Does it?' replied the other pettishly. 'I am wet through.'

'It doesn't take much to wet you and me through, Mr Crowl,' said Newman,
laying his hand upon the lappel of his threadbare coat.

'Well; and that makes it the more vexatious,' observed Mr Crowl, in the
same pettish tone.

Uttering a low querulous growl, the speaker, whose harsh countenance was
the very epitome of selfishness, raked the scanty fire nearly out of
the grate, and, emptying the glass which Noggs had pushed towards him,
inquired where he kept his coals.

Newman Noggs pointed to the bottom of a cupboard, and Mr Crowl, seizing
the shovel, threw on half the stock: which Noggs very deliberately took
off again, without saying a word.

'You have not turned saving, at this time of day, I hope?' said Crowl.

Newman pointed to the empty glass, as though it were a sufficient
refutation of the charge, and briefly said that he was going downstairs
to supper.

'To the Kenwigses?' asked Crowl.

Newman nodded assent.

'Think of that now!' said Crowl. 'If I didn't--thinking that you
were certain not to go, because you said you wouldn't--tell Kenwigs I
couldn't come, and make up my mind to spend the evening with you!'

'I was obliged to go,' said Newman. 'They would have me.'

'Well; but what's to become of me?' urged the selfish man, who never
thought of anybody else. 'It's all your fault. I'll tell you what--I'll
sit by your fire till you come back again.'

Newman cast a despairing glance at his small store of fuel, but, not
having the courage to say no--a word which in all his life he never had
said at the right time, either to himself or anyone else--gave way to
the proposed arrangement. Mr Crowl immediately went about making himself
as comfortable, with Newman Nogg's means, as circumstances would admit
of his being made.

The lodgers to whom Crowl had made allusion under the designation of
'the Kenwigses,' were the wife and olive branches of one Mr Kenwigs, a
turner in ivory, who was looked upon as