toil and pinching. Sweet to him were the rancid odours, delightfully
familiar the dirty knives, the twisted forks, the battered
teaspoons, not unwelcome the day's newspaper, splashed with brown
coffee and spots of grease. He often lamented that this kind of
establishment was growing rare, passing away with so many other
features of old London.

More fastidious, Greenacre could have wished his egg some six months
fresher, and his drink less obviously a concoction of rinsings. But
he was a guest, and his breeding did not allow him to complain. Of
the funeral he shrank from speaking; but the few words he dropped
were such as would have befitted 'a genuine grief. Gammon even heard
him murmur, unconsciously, "poor Bolsover."

Having eaten they wended their way to a little public-house, with a
parlour known only to the favoured few, where Greenacre, after a
glass or two of rum--a choice for which he thought it necessary to
apologize--began to discourse upon a topic peculiarly his own.

"I couldn't help thinking to-day, Gammon, what a strange assembly
there would be if all a man's relatives came to his funeral. Nearly
all of us must have such lots of distant connexions that we know
nothing about. Now a man like Bolsover--an aristocrat, with fifty or
more acknowledged relatives in good position--think how many more
there must be in out-of-the-way places, poor and unknown. Ay, and
some of them not so very distant kinsfolk either. Think of the hosts
of illegitimate children, for instance--some who know who they are,
and some who don't."

This was said so significantly that Gammon wondered whether it had a