She stopped and looked at her husband. But John Claxton, whose face had become pale again, his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes glaring into the fire, made her no reply.
[CHAPTER VI.]
4A SAFE INVESTMENT.
"The second-floor front have come in, Ben," said Mrs. Mogg, of 19A Poland-street, as she opened the door to her husband on a wet and windy autumnal evening; "she have come and brought her luggage--a green carpet-bag with a poll-parrot worked on it, and a foreign-looking bandbox tied up in a handkerchief. She's French, Ben, that's what she is."
"Is she?" said Mr. Mogg shortly. "Well, I'm hungry, that's what I am; so get me my tea."
He had had a long and dirty walk home from the West-India Docks, where he was employed as a warehouseman, and chattering in a windy passage about his wife's lodger scarcely seemed to him the most desirable way of employing his first moments at home.
But after dispatching two large breakfast-cups of tea, and several rounds Of hot salt-buttered toast, from which the crust had been carefully cut away, Mr. Mogg was somewhat mollified, and wiping his mouth and fingers on the dirty tablecloth, felt himself in cue to resume the conversation.
"O, the new second-floor has come, Martha, has she?" he commenced; "and she's French, you think. Well," continued Mr. Mogg, who was naturally rather slow in bringing his ideas into focus, "Dickson may or may not be a French name. That it's an English one, we all know; but that's no reason that it should not be a French one too, there being, as is well known, several words which are the same in both languages."
"She wrote down 'P. Dickson' when she came to take the rooms this morning, and I see P. D. worked on her purse when she took it out to pay the first week's rent in advance," said Mrs. Mogg.
"Then it's clear enough her name is Dickson," said Mr. Mogg, with a singular facility of reasoning. "What should you say she was, now, Martha--you're good at reckoning 'em up, you are--what is the second-floor front, should you say?"