ck a
little from the table, looked over his spectacles at me, then at the
table-cloth, and began in a dreamy voice:

"Old Gabriel is dead. I heard the news at the office this morning,
and went out and bought a black tie. I am the oldest man in Tweedy's
now--older by six years than Sam Collins, who comes next; so there is no
mistake about it. Sam is looking for the place; I saw it in his eye
when he told me, and I expect he'll get it. But I'm the oldest clerk in
Tweedy's. Only God Almighty can alter that, and it's very satisfactory
to me. I don't care about the money. Sam Collins will be stuck up over
it, like enough; but he'll never write a hand like Gabriel's, not if
he lives to be a hundred; and he knows it, and knows I'll be there to
remind him of it. Gabriel's was a beautiful fist--so small, too, if he
chose. Why, once, in his spare hours, he wrote out all the Psalms, with
the headings, on one side of a folio sheet, and had it framed and hung
up in his parlour, out at Shepherd's Bush. He died in the night--oh yes,
quite easily. He was down at the office all yesterday, and spoke to me
as brisk as a bird. They found him dead in his bed this morning.

"I seem cut up about it? Well, not exactly. Ah, you noticed that
I refused my chop to-day. Bless your soul, that's not on Gabriel's
account. I am well on in years, and I suppose it would be natural of me
to pity old men, and expect pity. But I can't; no, _it's only the young
that I pity_. If you _must_ know, I didn't take the chop to-day because
I haven't the money in my pocket to pay for it. You see, there was this
black tie that I gave eighteenpence for; but something else happened
this morning that I'll tell you about.

"I came down in a 'bus, as usual. You remember what muggy weather it was
up to ten o'clock--though you wouldn't think it, to feel the heat now.
Well, the 'bus was packed, inside and out. At least, there was just room
for one more inside when we pulled up by Charing Cross, and there he got
in--a boy with a stick and a bundle in a blue handkerchief.

"He wasn't more than thirteen; bound for the docks, you could tell at a
glance; and by the way he looked about you could tell as easily that in
stepping outside Charing Cross station he'd set foot on London stones
for the first time. God knows how it struck him--the slush and drizzle,
the ugly shop-fronts, the horses slipping in the brown mud, the crowd
on the pavement pushing him this side and that. The p