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122 never thought of anybody else. "It's all your fault. I'll tell you what—I'll sit by your fire till you come back again."

Newman cast a despairing glance at his small store of fuel, but not having the courage to say no, a word which in all his life he never could say at the right time, either to himself or any one else, gave way to the proposed arrangement, and Mr. Crowl immediately went about making himself as comfortable with Newman Noggs's means, as circumstances would admit of his being.

The lodgers to whom Crowl had made allusion under the designation of "the Kenwigses," were the wife and olive branches of one Mr. Kenwigs, a turner in ivory, who was looked upon as a person of some consideration on the premises, inasmuch as he occupied the whole of the first floor, comprising a suite of two rooms. Mrs. Kenwigs, too, was quite a lady in her manners, and of a very genteel family, having an uncle who collected a water-rate; besides which distinction, the two eldest of her little girls went twice a week to a dancing school in the neighbourhood, and had flaxen hair tied with blue ribands hanging in luxuriant pigtails down their backs, and wore little white trousers with frills round the ancles—for all of which reasons and many more, equally valid but too numerous to mention, Mrs. Kenwigs was considered a very desirable person to know, and was the constant theme of all the gossips in the street, and even three or four doors round the corner at both ends.

It was the anniversary of that happy day on which the church of England as by law established, had bestowed Mrs. Kenwigs upon Mr. Kenwigs, and in grateful commemoration of the same, Mrs. Kenwigs had invited a few select friends to cards and supper in the first floor, and put on a new gown to receive them in, which gown, being of a flaming colour and made upon a juvenile principle, was so successful that Mr. Kenwigs said the eight years of matrimony and the five children seemed all a dream, and Mrs. Kenwigs younger and more blooming than the very first Sunday he kept company with her.

Beautiful as Mrs. Kenwigs looked when she was dressed though, and so stately that you would have supposed she had a cook and housemaid at least, and nothing to do but order them about, she had had a world of trouble with the preparations; more indeed than she, being of a delicate and genteel constitution, could have sustained, had not the pride of housewifery upheld her. At last, however, all the things that had to be got together were got together, and all the things that had to be got out of the way were got out of the way, and everything was ready, and the collector himself having promised to come, fortune smiled upon the occasion.

The party was admirably selected. There were first of all Mr. Kenwigs and Mrs. Kenwigs, and four olive Kenwigses who sat up to supper, firstly, because it was but right that they should have a treat on such a day; and secondly, because their going to bed in presence of the company, would have been inconvenient, not to say improper. Then there was the young lady who had made Mrs. Kenwigs's dress, and who—it was the most convenient thing in the world—living in the two-pair back, gave up her bed to the baby, and got a little girl to watch it. Then, to match this young lady, was a young