"and another; I dote on apples, I do.
always buy 'em when I'm sent out with bills
for acceptance. My wages is eighteen. I
gives my mother, which is a widder, twelve, and
I spends the rest on apples. I don't go to
the theayter. Cutwig and Co. don't like it. It's
wicked. I eats apples all day. They 'elps
me with the figures." And the clerk resumed
his caligraphy in the dark, munching as he
wrote.

And now nothing would suit Mr. Ranns—by
whom this amicable conversation had not been
heard—but that Miss Floris should be taken up
stairs and presented to the head of the house,
Cutwig and Co. itself. So, up-stairs went Lily,
pleased and amused, and in a front drawing-room
they found, reading a newspaper, and with a
bottle of wine before him, such a nice dear old
gentleman, with a powdered head which wagged
to and fro, and with gold-rimmed spectacles.
This was Mr. Cutwig, head of the firm, Co. and
all. He was eighty years of age, and father of
his company. "Might have been alderman and
passed the chair long ago, but the late Mrs.
Cutwig was a lofty soul, and couldn't abear the
corporation. She thought it low," said Mr.
Ranns.

"Fitted her out, sir," was the simple speech
accompanying the presentation of Lily.

"Good lad, good lad," piped old Mr. Cutwig
in a very shrill treble (Mr. Ranns might have
been on the shady side of forty). "Train up a
child in the way he should go, and when he is
old he'll be worth eighty thousand pound, and
on the Court of Assistants. Here's a new shilling
from the Mint, my dear."

He pulled out of his waistcoat-pocket a very
dazzling piece of money, which, with a shaking
hand, he gave it to Lily. The child had some
scruples as to accepting it, but, at a discreet
sign from Mr. Ranns, she took it and thanked
him.

"I came into this town nigh upon seventy
year ago, by the Dover waggon, with one-and
-fippence-halfpenny in my pocket," piped old Mr.
Cutwig. " I slept on a hop-sack in the Borough
market. Many a little makes a mickle. Honesty
is the best policy. Ask Ranns. He's a good
lad, and has been with me, man and boy, over
seven-and-twenty year. I always took care of
my shop, and my shop always took care of
me."

Here the old gentleman's head began to wag
more rapidly, and Lily noticed that he was
holding his newspaper upside down.

"He's breaking fast," Mr. Ranns mentioned
confidentially, as, the interview being over, he
conducted Lily down stairs, "but he's as good
as gold. Wonderful man of business in his
time, my dear. He'd get up at six o'clock and
ship two tons of goods to the colonies before
breakfast, but he's a little out of date now, and
when you come back from school you mustn't
be surprised to see Ranns and Eldred over the
door, late Cutwig and Co. Unless," he continued
in a contemplative under tone, "Ranns
turns into Eldred, and Eldred into Ranns."

It was four o'clock when they reached the
shop again. Lily's outfit was quite completed,
and she sat down meekly on her trunk, and
waited for about half an hour longer, when a
grand carriage came driving furiously to the
door, and a powdered footman (there were two
behind the carriage) descended and handed out
Lily's protectress. The child saw the lady turn
on the threshold as she entered and wave her
hand in token of farewell to an old gentleman
in the carriage. He was a splendid gentleman,
with a fringe of white whisker round his face,
and Lily somehow fancied that she had seen
him before. Was it at the Greenwich dinner,
yesterday?

The handsome lady was radiant. Lily had
never seen her look so good tempered. She
was pleased with everything, and, to Miss
Eldred, was positively civil. Mr. Ranns handed
her, with a low bow, the invoice for the child's
outfit. The lady, just glancing at the sum
total, instantly, and without question, disbursed
the amount in crisp bank-notes. Then a hackney
coach was called, and the trunk hoisted on to it,
and Lily herself was lifted into the vehicle.
The coach was just driving away, when Mr.
Ranns, bearing a package which seemed to be a
small canoe wrapped in brown paper, came
running to the coach door.

"Beg pardon for the liberty, ma'am," he said,
deferentially, "but would you allow this parcel
to be put into the coach? Miss Floris is such
a dear little girl, and we forgot to take off five
per cent discount for cash. It's only a Noah's
ark, with Cutwig and Co.'s compliments."And
Mr. Ranns ran back again as hard as he could
into Cutwig and Co.'s premises: thus obviating
the possibility of the lady indignantly declining
the present, or launching the canoe bodily at his
head.

But the lady didn't decline it. She was in
far too good a temper to do that. In fact, she
condescended to tell Lily that it was kind, really
very kind, of the people in the shop; and she so
smiled on her, and looked generally so splendid
and so benignant, that the child gazed upon her
face with an admiring awe, as though she had
been an animated rainbow.

"What do you think of that, little one?" she
said in a triumphant voice, flashing before the
child's eyes a great bracelet which encircled her
wrist, and which blazed with diamonds. When
suddenly she descried something shining in Lily's
hand. It was the new shilling from the Mint.

The child, blushing and stammering, explained
that the nice old gentleman with the powdered
head had given it her, and that she had at first
hesitated to take it, but that the other gentleman
had told her to take it. The lady was in great
wrath, snatched the coin from her, and flung it
out of the coach window.

"I've a good mind to throw the Noah's ark
after it," she cried, with a furious look. "You
mean little wretch. Ma foi, you begin early to
a beggar. You have thief's blood in you.
He would take anything, that base monster;"
and she went on scolding Lily, but in a rambling