sinking deeper and deeper into the yielding fat of the soft face;
the nose afflicted with that disordered action of its functions
which is generally termed The Snuffles; the short thick throat and
labouring chest, with other beauties of the like description;
though calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could at first
allot to nobody he had ever known: and yet he had some
recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chickenstalker's
partner in the general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line
of life, he recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an
apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty's mind
with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by giving him admission to the
mansion where he had confessed his obligations to that lady, and
drawn on his unlucky head such grave reproach.

Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes
he had seen; but association is very strong sometimes; and he
looked involuntarily behind the parlour-door, where the accounts of
credit customers were usually kept in chalk. There was no record
of his name. Some names were there, but they were strange to him,
and infinitely fewer than of old; from which he argued that the
porter was an advocate of ready-money transactions, and on coming
into the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chickenstalker
defaulters.

So desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise
of his blighted child, that it was a sorrow to him, even to have no
place in Mrs. Chickenstalker's ledger.

'What sort of a night is it, Anne?' inquired the former porter of
Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before the fire, and