'Very well, I'll tell him.'
'And don't tell any one here,' added Lance. 'You don't go and tell W. W. everything, do you?' he added, wistful and perplexed.
'Not other people's secrets,' said John. 'Now I am going to fetch you some food; you are looking quite faint, you have had nothing since yesterday's dinner.'
Poor Lance! when John was gone, he turned with another groan, once more took the violin in his arms, laid it on his shoulder, and made the motions of playing, then kissed it, and whispering, 'Poulter will be good to you, my pretty. It's not for that little beggar of a Bear! It's for Felix, for Felix—' and then at a sound of steps, hastily replaced it, shut the box, and fell back again, dizzy and exhausted.
The next day, he betook himself to a refuge more impregnable to Bernard than even Mr. Froggatt's bed-room, namely the office, which suited his sociable nature, and where he was always welcome. He found employment there, too, in cutting out extracts from newspapers, labelling library books, and packing parcels, and sometimes also, it must be owned, in drawing caricatures of the figures he spied through the chinks of the door.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
SMOKE-JACK ALLEY.
Launce. It is no matter if the ty'd were lost, for it is the unkindest ty'd that ever man ty'd.