on the walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was
on the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds, and mosses, decorated the
chimney-piece; the little wainscotted back parlour was lighted by a
sky-light, like a cabin.

Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephew
Walter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman,
to carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills
himself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a maritime
appearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and
stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he looked like
anything but a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old
fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns looking at
you through a fog; and a newly-awakened manner, such as he might have
acquired by having stared for three or four days successively through
every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back to the
world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his outward
man, was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and
ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus
the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very
precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his
forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt
which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy
against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even
of the very Sun itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shop
and parlour behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; going
regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the
lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had
little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns.

It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader
and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of
seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily
clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human
tide is still rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr
Gills says, 'very much.' It threatens to be wet to-night. All the
weatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already
shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.

'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Sol