Page:Hopkinson Smith--In Dickens's London.djvu/130

IN DICKENS'S LONDON dogs and tired waggoners lay fast asleep, oblivious of the pieman and the public house."

Quite another side of Covent Garden Market is given in "Our Mutual Friend," written some twenty years later. The market may have lost its pristine freshness since the days of Ruth and Tom's economics, or Mr. Dickens might have come upon it at dawn after one of his nightly prowls and have utilised the more forbidding impressions thus gained, in this later work:

"'Where are you going to seek your fortune?' asked Miss Wren.

"The old man smiled, but looked about him with a look of having lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls' dressmaker.

"'Verily, Jenny,' said he, 'the question is to the purpose, and more easily asked than answered. But as I have experience of the ready good will and good help of those who have given occupation to Lizzie, I think I will seek them out for myself.'

"'On foot?' asked Miss Wren, with a chop.

"'Ay!' said the old man. 'Have I not my staff?'

"It was exactly because he had his staff, and presented so quaint an aspect, that she mistrusted his making the journey.

"'The best thing you can do,' said Jenny, 'for the time being, at all events, is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody's there but my bad child, and Lizzie's lodging stands empty.' &hellip;

"Now the bad child having been strictly charged by his parent to remain at home in her absence, of course went 76