, when there was
no occasion for roughing it, he did like to see things well cooked and
nicely served; and wine, you know, was not worth drinking--positively
nauseous--if it was not of the best.

Sir Richard was a poor man--a very poor man. He had only five thousand
a year--a mere pittance; and he managed this sum in such a peculiar way
that he never had anything wherewith to help a struggling friend, or to
give to the poor, or to assist the various religious and charitable
institutions by which he was surrounded; while at certain intervals in
the year he experienced exasperating difficulty in meeting the demands
of those torments to society, the tradespeople--people who ought to be
ashamed of themselves for not being willing to supply the nobility and
gentry with food and clothing gratuitously! Moreover, Sir Richard never
by any chance laid anything by.

Standing by the pony's head, and making tender efforts to restrain his
waywardness, stood a boy--a street boy--a city Arab. To a Londoner any
description of this boy would be superfluous, but it may be well to
state, for the benefit of the world at large, that the class to which he
belonged embodies within its pale the quintessence of rollicking
mischief, and the sublimate of consummate insolence.

This remarkable boy was afflicted with a species of dance--not that of
Saint Vitus, but a sort of double-shuffle, with a stamp of the right
foot at the end--in which he was prone to indulge, consciously and
unconsciously, at all times, and the tendency to which he sometimes
found it difficult to resist. He was beginning to hum the
sharply-defined air to which he was in the habit of performing this
dance, when little Diana said, in a silvery voice quite in keeping with
her beauty--

"Let go his head, boy; I'm quite sure that he cannot bear restraint."

It may be remarked here that little Di was probably a good judge on that
point, being herself nearly incapable of bearing restraint.

"I'd better not, miss," replied the boy with profound respect in tone
and manner, for he had yet to be paid for the job; "he seems raither
frisky, an' might take a fancy to bolt, you know."

"Let his head go, I say!" returned Miss Diana with a flashing of the
blue eyes, and a pursing of the rosebud mouth that proved her to be one
of Adam's race after all.

"Vell, now, don't you think," rejoined the boy, in an expostulating
tone, "that it would be as veil to vait for the guv'nor befor