.
W., this is the gentleman who has taken your first-floor. He was so good
as to make an appointment for to-night, when you would be at home.'

A dark gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say
handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained,
reserved, diffident, troubled. His eyes were on Miss Bella for an
instant, and then looked at the ground as he addressed the master of the
house.

'Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr Wilfer, with the rooms, and with
their situation, and with their price, I suppose a memorandum between us
of two or three lines, and a payment down, will bind the bargain? I wish
to send in furniture without delay.'

Two or three times during this short address, the cherub addressed had
made chubby motions towards a chair. The gentleman now took it, laying
a hesitating hand on a corner of the table, and with another hesitating
hand lifting the crown of his hat to his lips, and drawing it before his
mouth.

'The gentleman, R. W.,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'proposes to take your
apartments by the quarter. A quarter's notice on either side.'

'Shall I mention, sir,' insinuated the landlord, expecting it to be
received as a matter of course, 'the form of a reference?'

'I think,' returned the gentleman, after a pause, 'that a reference is
not necessary; neither, to say the truth, is it convenient, for I am
a stranger in London. I require no reference from you, and perhaps,
therefore, you will require none from me. That will be fair on both
sides. Indeed, I show the greater confidence of the two, for I will pay
in advance whatever you please, and I am going to trust my furniture
here. Whereas, if you were in embarrassed circumstances--this is merely
supposititious--'

Conscience causing R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs Wilfer, from a corner (she
always got into stately corners) came to the rescue with a deep-toned
'Per-fectly.'

'--Why then I--might lose it.'

'Well!' observed R. Wilfer, cheerfully, 'money and goods are certainly
the best of references.'

'Do you think they ARE the best, pa?' asked Miss Bella, in a low voice,
and without looking over her shoulder as she warmed her foot on the
fender.

'Among the best, my dear.'

'I should have thought, myself, it was so easy to add the usual kind of
one,' said Bella, with a toss of her curls.

The gentleman listened to her, with a face of marked attention, though
he neither looked up nor changed his attitude. He sat,