“Ax yer parding, marm, but perhaps you might be a wanting to see the Smoucher?”
“Where is he, Meg?”
“He’s up in his room with the cracksman, and a lot more. They be full o’ b’isness.”
“He’ll find time to see me, I daresay,” returned Alf’s mistress.
She passed through a large apartment and went upstairs to a room on the first story, which was small and almost filled with ragged men and women.
In this room also was the dark-bearded man whom Alf had conversed with below.
“What are they doing, sir?” inquired the boy.
“Making a cadger,” returned the man who then whispered to a short, thick-set fellow next to him, who whispered to somebody else, and Alf heard them saying as they glanced at his mistress—
“That’s Laura Stanbridge, the most famous she-fence in London, and she cuts it fat at the West-end of the town.”
Then the men nodded mysteriously to one another.