chimes in agravating Benjamin, winking at the candle-
light like an owl at the sunshine.

Trottle examined the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was
speaking of him. He found "My son Benjamin" to be little and lean, and
buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his
ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale,
and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it
sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous
big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the
wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary
bottle. In plain English, the complaint of "My son Benjamin" was
drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this
conclusion easily enough, after a moment's observation of the man,
Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer
than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the
monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it with a curiosity that he
could hardly account for at first. Was there something familiar to him
in the man's features? He turned away from them for an instant, and then
turned back to him again. After that second look, the notion forced
itself into his mind, that he had certainly seen a face somewhere, of
which that sot's face appeared like a kind of slovenly copy. "Where?"
thinks he to himself, "where did I last see the man whom this agravating
Benjamin, here, so very strongly reminds me of?"

It was no time, just then--with the cheerful old woman's eye searching
him all over, and the cheerful old woman's tongue talking at him,
nineteen to the dozen--for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small
matters that had got into wrong corners of it. He put by in his mind
that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin's face, to be taken up
again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him
in prime order for present necessities.

"You wouldn't like to go down into the kitchen, would you?" says the
witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle's
mother, instead of Benjamin's. "There's a bit of fire in the grate, and
the sink in the back kitchen don't smell to matter much to-day, and it's
uncommon chilly up here when a person's flesh don't hardly cover a
person's bones. But you don't look cold, sir, do you? And then, why,
Lord bless my soul, ou