"Can't afford to have weak eyes yet, and so have sacrificed all my personal charms for the sake of convenience in matters of business. You don't mean to say that they look so very bad, though?"
"You look nearer ninety than nineteen," she replies. "Oh! I wouldn't take to spectacles for ever so much."
"That's a very different affair," remarks Sidney.
"Why?"
"Oh! because it is—that's all. Well, I think I'll say good night now—shall I take that box up-stairs for you, Miss Harriet?"
"Ann and I can manage it, Mr. Hinchford," says Mattie.
"Yes, and put a rib out, or something. Can't allow the gentler sex to be black slaves during my sojourn in Great Suffolk Street. Good night all."
"Good night."
He closes the shop door, seizes the box which has been deposited in the shop, swings it round on his shoulders, and marches up-stairs with it two steps at a time, and whistling the while. On the landing, outside the sitting-room, and double-bedded room, which his father occupies, Ann Packet, domestic servant, meets him with a light.
"Lor a mussy on us!—is that you, Master Sidney?"