rk."

"The big winder," says the child, pointing up to it, "sees in the dark;
and I see with the big winder." He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs,
and looks hard at Benjamin's mother. "I'm a good 'un," says he, "ain't
I? I save candle."

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought
up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as
to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit. O,
yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs
about the house), the lively little cricket--a run according to good Mr.
Forley's instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr.
Forley's friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr.
Forley's instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an
infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove
the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his
feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and
looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy
was going to amuse himself with next.

The child had gathered up his blacking-brush and bit of rag, and had put
them into the old tin saucepan; and was now working his way, as well as
his clothes would let him, with his make-believe pail hugged up in his
arms, towards a door of communication which led from the back to the
front garret.

"I say," says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, "what are you
two stopping here for? I'm going to bed now--and so I tell you!"

With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing
Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjamin's mother opened her
wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.

"Mercy on us!" says she, "haven't you seen enough of him yet?"

"No," says Trottle. "I should like to see him go to bed."

Benjamin's mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose
extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her
hand. To think of good Mr. Forley's friend taking ten times more trouble
about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that,
Benjamin's mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and
she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.

Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pre