r little bit of business is so very, very little,
it's hardly worth while to go downstairs about it, after all. Quite a
game at business, ain't it, sir? Give-and-take that's what I call
it--give-and-take!"

With that, her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about
Trottle's waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son,
holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm
with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was
about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got
an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it
out charitably for the benefit of Trottle.

"I say!" says Benjamin, settling himself against the wall and nodding his
head viciously at his cheerful old mother. "I say! Look out. She'll
skin you!"

Assisted by these signs and warnings, Trottle found no difficulty in
understanding that the business referred to was the giving and taking of
money, and that he was expected to be the giver. It was at this stage of
the proceedings that he first felt decidedly uncomfortable, and more than
half inclined to wish he was on the street-side of the house-door again.

He was still cudgelling his brains for an excuse to save his pocket, when
the silence was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the upper part of the
house.

It was not at all loud--it was a quiet, still, scraping sound--so faint
that it could hardly have reached the quickest ears, except in an empty
house.

"Do you hear that, Benjamin?" says the old woman. "He's at it again,
even in the dark, ain't he? P'raps you'd like to see him, sir!" says
she, turning on Trottle, and poking her grinning face close to him. "Only
name it; only say if you'd like to see him before we do our little bit of
business--and I'll show good Forley's friend up-stairs, just as if he was
good Mr. Forley himself. _My_ legs are all right, whatever Benjamin's
may be. I get younger and younger, and stronger and stronger, and
jollier and jollier, every day--that's what I do! Don't mind the stairs
on my account, sir, if you'd like to see him."

"Him?" Trottle wondered whether "him" meant a man, or a boy, or a
domestic animal of the male species. Whatever it meant, here was a
chance of putting off that uncomfortable give-and-take-business, and,
better still, a chance perhaps of finding out one of the secrets of the
mysterious House. Trottle's spirits began to