“I am one-and-thirty years of age, and my name is Stephen.”
“Good. Be here when the vesper bell begins to ring.”
Stephen went up to Cheapside, turned along it, up Lady Cicely’s Lane, and out into Smithfield by one of the small posterns in the City wall. Entering a small house in Cock Lane, he went up a long ladder leading to a tiny chamber, screened-off from a garret. Here a tabby cat came to meet him, and rubbed itself against his legs as he stooped down to caress it, while Ermine, who sat on the solitary bench, looked up brightly to greet him.
“Any success, Stephen?”
“Thy prayer is heard, sweet heart. I have entered the service of a baker in Bread Street,—a good-humoured fellow who would take me at my own word. I told him I had no one to refer him to for a character but you,—I did not think of Gib, or I might have added him. You’d speak for me, wouldn’t you, old tabby?”
Gib replied by an evidently affirmative “Me-ew!”
“I’ll give you an excellent character,” said Ermine, smiling, “and so will Gib, I am sure.”
The baker was well satisfied when his new hand reached the Harp exactly as the vesper bell sounded its first stroke at Saint Mary-le-Bow.
“That’s right!” said he. “I like to see a man punctual. Take this damp cloth and rub the shelves.”
“Clean!” said he to himself a minute after. “Have you ever rubbed shelves before?”