hly respectable heirloom--a work of art. This is varnishing
day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with
me.' He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: 'There will be
nothing done here for an hour.'

Paul followed him down the stairs and into the street, where the fog
seemed thicker than before.

'Is it often like this in the City?' he asked.

'No,' said his companion; 'I regret to say it isn't We get very little
open weather in the City at this time of year. As a rule, in February
you find the City clouded.'

'This is quite clouded enough for my taste,' said Paul, coughing and
weeping.

'My dear sir,' said Mr. Warr, 'this is merely Italian! Ah! I forgot You
are fresh from the country. You think this foggy! Well, perhaps it is
not quite so bright as we get it some days. But a real fog in London is
a very different thing from this. In 'the great fog of January, '68,
it happened very fortunately for me that the partner of my
highly-respectable joys and sorrows had asked me to purchase a meat-axe.
I hewed my way home by its aid, sir. When I reached London Bridge I was
so fatigued that I was compelled to sit down, and to beguile the time I
cut a portion of the fog in strips, and modelled the strips into a
very handsome set of hat-pegs. They would have made a highly superior
souvenir of an interesting occasion, but they were, unfortunately,
stolen. By the way, if you happen to have sixpence about you I needn't
ask for credit for the varnish. I hate debt as I hate the devil. Thank
you, sir. This way.' He rolled into a gin-shop, and called for 'a
quartern and two outs,' tendering Paul's coin in payment.

Paul declined any share in the liquor. He was watchful, and as full of
interest as a child. The battered pewter counter, with little pools of
dirty liquid in its hollows; the green-painted, flat-bellied barrels
with bands of faded gilding; the moist and filthy sawdust on the floor,
with last week's odours in it and a mere sprinkling of clean sawdust
on top, offering its hint of the timber-stacks in the yard next door
to home; the winking gas with the fog-halo round it; the shirt-sleeved
barman; the female habitual drunkard here for a dram thus early, and
holding her glass in both shaking palms as if she warmed her hands at
it; the ceiling, cobwebbed and clouded with gas-smoke; the gaping door,
like a dead jaw that would have dropped but for the straps that held
it--all these things bea