ever you mind that, youngster, but you come along wi' me. I've got a
sort o' right to feed you. Ha! ha! come along."

Sam became frightened at this sudden burst of hilarity, and shrank away,
but Ned grasped him by the arm, and led him along with such decision,
that resistance he felt would be useless.

In a few minutes he was in Ned's garret eating bread and cheese with
ravenous satisfaction.

"Have some beer!" said Ned, filling a pewter pot.

"No--no--no--no!" said Sam, shuddering as he turned his head away.

"Well, youngster," returned Ned, with a slight look of surprise, "please
yourself, and here's your health."

He drained the pot to the bottom, after which, dividing his straw into
two heaps, and throwing them into two corners, he bade Sam lie down and
rest.

The miserable boy was only too glad to do so. He flung himself on the
little heap pointed out, and the last thing he remembered seeing before
the "sweet restorer" embraced him was the huge form of Ned Frog sitting
in his own corner with his back to the wall, the pewter pot at his
elbow, and a long clay pipe in his mouth.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

HOPES REVIVE.

Mr Thomas Balls, butler to Sir Richard Brandon, standing with his legs
wide apart and his hands under his coat tails in the servants' hall,
delivered himself of the opinion that "things was comin' to a wonderful
pass when Sir Richard Brandon would condescend to go visitin' of a low
family in Whitechapel."

"But the family is no more low than you are, Mr Balls," objected Jessie
Summers, who, being not very high herself, felt that the remark was
slightly personal.

"Of course not, my dear," replied Balls, with a paternal smile. "I did
not for a moment mean that Mr Samuel Twitter was low in an offensive
sense, but in a social sense. Sir Richard, you know, belongs to the
hupper ten, an' he 'as not been used to associate with people so much
further down in the scale. Whether he's right or whether he's wrong
ain't for me to say. I merely remark that, things being as they are,
the master 'as come to a wonderful pass."

"It's all along of Miss Diana," said Mrs Screwbury. "That dear child
'as taken the firm belief into her pretty 'ead that all people are equal
in the sight of their Maker, and that we should look on each other as
brothers and sisters, and you know she can twist Sir Richard round her
little finger, and she's taken a great fancy to that Twitter family ever
since she's bee