“What dreary little streets are those that lead from the Strand towards the Thames! Pinched, frail, semi-genteel, and many-lodgered are the houses, mysteriously indicative of a variously occupied population, and painfully suggesting, by the surging conflict of busy life at one end, and the dark flowing river at the other, an existence maintained between struggle and suicide.” This, most valued reader, if no reflection of mine, but was the thought that occupied the mind of one who, in not the very best of humors, and of a wet and dreary night, knocked, in succession, at half the doors in the street in search after an acquaintance.
“Yes, sir, the second back,” said a sleepy maid-servant at last; “he is just come in.”
“All right,” said the stranger. “Take that carpet-bag and writing-desk upstairs to his room, and say that Captain Davis is coming after them.'”
“You owe me a tip, Captain,” said the cabman, catching the name as he was about to mount his box. “Do you remember the morning I drove you down to Blackwall to catch the Antwerp boat, I went over Mr. Moss, the sheriff's officer, and smashed his ankle, and may I never taste bitters again if I got a farthing for it.”
“I remember,” said Davis, curtly. “Here's a crown. I 'd have made it a sovereign if it had been his neck you 'd gone over.”
“Better luck next time, sir, and thank you,” said the man, as he drove away.
The maid was yet knocking for admission when Grog arrived at the door. “Captain Fisk, sir,—Captain Fisk, there 's a gent as says—”
“That will do,” said Davis, taking the key from her hand and opening the door for himself.
“Old Grog himself, as I'm a living man!” cried a tall, much whiskered and moustached fellow, who was reading a “Bell's Life” at the fire.
“Ay, Master Fisk,—no other,” said Davis, as he shook his friend cordially by the hand. “I 've had precious work to find you out I was up at Duke Street, then they sent me to the Adelphi; after that I tried Ling's, in the Hay-market, and it was a waiter there—”