One morning, a considerable time after the events narrated in the last chapter, I sat on the sofa waiting for breakfast, and engaged in an interesting conversation with Dumps. The only difference in our mode of communication was that Dumps talked with his eyes, I with my tongue.

 

From what I have already said about my doggie, it will be understood that his eyes—which were brown and speaking eyes—lay behind such a forest of hair that it was only by clearing the dense masses away that I could obtain a full view of his liquid orbs. I am not sure that his ears were much less expressive than his eyes. Their variety of motion, coupled with their rate of action, served greatly to develop the full meaning of what his eyes said.

 

“Mrs Miff seems to have forgotten us this morning, Dumps,” I remarked, pulling out my watch.

 

One ear cocked forward, the other turned back towards the door, and a white gleam under the hair, indicating that the eyes turned in the same direction, said as plainly as there was any occasion for—

 

“No; not quite forgotten us. I hear her coming now.”

 

“Ha! so she is. Now you shall have a feed.” Both ears elevated to the full extent obviously meant “Hurrah!” while a certain motion of his body appeared to imply that, in consequence of his sedentary position, he was vainly attempting to wag the sofa.

 

“If you please, sir,” said my landlady, laying the breakfast tray on the table, “there’s a shoe-black in the kitchen says he wants to see you.”

 

“Ah! young Slidder, I fancy. Well, send him up.”

 

“He says he’s ’ad his breakfast an’ will wait till you have done, sir.”

 

“Very considerate. Send him up nevertheless.”

 

In a few minutes my protégé stood before me, hat in hand, looking, in the trim costume of the brigade, quite a different being from the ragged creature I had met with in Whitechapel. Dumps instantly assaulted him with loving demonstrations.

 

“How spruce you look, my boy!”

 

“Thanks to you, sir,” replied Slidder, with a familiar nod; “they do say I’m lookin’ up.”

 

“I hope you like the work. Have you had breakfast? Would a roll do you any good?”

 

“Thankee, I’m primed for the day. I came over, sir, to say that granny seems to me to be out o’ sorts. Since I’ve been allowed to sleep on the rug inside her door, I’ve noticed that she ain’t so lively as she used to was. Shivers a deal w’en it ain’t cold, groans now an’ then, an whimpers a good deal. It strikes me, now—though I ain’t a reg’lar sawbones—that there’s suthin’ wrong with her in’ards.”

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