“That’s all I wanted to say at the present time,” continued Fledgeby in a grudging vein, as he got off the stool, “except that I wish you’d take the air where you can hear the bell, or the knocker, either one of the two or both. By the by how do you take the air at the top of the house? Do you stick your head out of a chimney-pot?”

“Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.”

“To bury your money in, you old dodger?”

“A thumbnail’s space of garden would hold the treasure I bury, master,” said Riah. “Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an old man’s wages, bury themselves.”

“I should like to know what you really are worth,” returned Fledgeby, with whom his growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very convenient fiction. “But come! Let’s have a look at your garden on the tiles, before I go!”