Little Queer Street, Seven Dials, is not a particularly nice street to live in, but as every house in it is inhabited to the utmost extent of its inhabitable capacity, it is evidently a street in which a great many people are very glad to live.

Squalor and vice and misery, and everything that can make life horrible, find their way into Little Queer Street, but fail to frighten the inhabitants. Dirt they like—it suits them; most of them have been brought up from infancy in close contact with it, and would feel uncomfortable without it. As to vice and misery, they have seen so much of them that any terror such things might once have possessed has long since worn off. They may be real spectres to some people, but to them they are only clumsy turnip-headed bogies, and he must be a very young native of the locality indeed who would betray the suspicion of a shudder at the sight of either.

All day long the muddy roadway is blocked with costers’ barrows, who drive a roaring trade in cheap crockery, stale vegetables, doubtful meat, and still more doubtful fish, which one class looks upon as abominations, and another holds in high esteem as luxuries.

There are shops, too, in Little Queer Street. Such shops! Dusty, dirty, barn-looking rooms, where sallow-faced women sit, dishevelled and ragged, amid old boots and shoes, tumbled and dirty dresses, old coats, and promiscuous heaps of cast-off wearing apparel.

Sometimes the shop is not large enough to contain the varied assortment of ‘goods’ in which the proprietor deals, and a portion of the narrow pavement is taken into the service.

Rows of boots—very much worn at the heels, and very shabby about the uppers, but thickly coated with a blacking which is rather sticky than shiny—stand in military array to tempt the shoeless.

But though the habits and customs and source of income of the inhabitants of the lower portion of the houses in Little Queer Street are thus openly demonstrated, the rest is all mystery. How the second, third, and fourth floors get their living, what they are, and what they do, it would be a difficult matter to explain. Most of them evidently have very small incomes and very large families. There are more children of all sizes and conditions in Little Queer Street than in any other street in the United Kingdom.

Almost every female carries a baby, and some females carry two. There are children in heaps at the corner of the street, children on the doorsteps, children in the gutter, children under the wheels of hansom cabs, up the lamp-posts, hanging over the window-sills, crowding the staircases, lying in the areas, rolling with the cabbage-stalks under the stalls, swarming and crawling all day long among the crowd, laughing, crying, screaming, and playing, unheeded, uncared for, unowned.

Their hair is rough and matted, their little hands are black with mud, their faces are grimed with dirt, and often, alas! scarred with disease. Sometimes they get lost, every now and then one or two will be run over by a cab or a brewer’s dray, and sometimes an epidemic will swoop down upon Little Queer Street, and thin the ranks of the great gutter army, and make more room for the remainder.

All day long these human waifs loiter in the street, at the peril of life and limb. They have no regular meal-times. They get a slice of bread-and-butter, occasionally a slice of bread-and-treacle, at irregular periods, and this constitutes their staple sustenance.

Many of them are turned out at seven, when mother and father go to work, and called in again at whatever hour it may suit father and mother to return. It is considered safer to leave them outside than in. Out of doors they may get killed; indoors they might damage the ‘furniture’ or set fire to the house.

Two days after Edward Marston’s strange meeting with Dr. Birnie, a little girl sat at one of the open doorways in Little Queer Street, gazing vacantly at the busy scene around her. A stranger would have been instantly attracted by the extraordinary appearance of her face. It was quite clean. Her hair was neatly brushed, and over her plain little brown merino frock she actually wore a white pinafore. Not only would a stranger be struck with amazement at the phenomenal appearance—a clean and tidy little girl on a Little Queer Street door-step—but the inhabitants have been for a long time so struck with it that Gertie Heckett, the child in question, has become quite a local celebrity.

‘That gal ‘ll die a orful death,’ said Mrs. Maloney, of the fish-shop at the corner, to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Moss. ‘Larst night she came for a pen’orth o’ fried fish, and I guv her a ha’penny too much change out o’ sixpence, and she guv it me back.’

‘Lor,’ replied Mrs. Moss, ‘you don’t say so! I fancy she can’t be quite right ‘ere.’ And Mrs. Moss put a very dirty and very fat forefinger on her matronly brow.

‘I don’t believe she’s old Heckett’s gal at all,’ added Mrs. Maloney, as she stared hard across the road to the doorway where sat the unconscious object of her criticism. ‘It’s my belief she’s been stole, like the gal in the play as was a nobleman’s dorter, arter all.’

What Mrs. Moss would have replied to this suggestion can never be known, for at this moment the attention of both ladies was attracted by the very extraordinary conduct of the child in question.

Gertie Heckett, who had long been wistfully looking up the street, suddenly leaped up and made a joyful dash at a gentleman who was elbowing his way through the crowd.

He was a good-looking, well-dressed gentleman, of about eight-and-thirty. Gertie Heckett’s pretty face lit up with pleasure the moment she caught sight of him. She was by his side in a moment, and looking up into his face with her wistful blue eyes.

‘Oh, Dr. Birnie, I’m so glad you ‘ve come. Grandfather’s worse—I’m sure he is.’

‘What makes you think he’s worse, my child?’

‘Because he gets crosser and crosser, and’—here a flush of shame came upon her cheeks and she held her head down—‘and because he swears at me worse than ever.’

Dr. Birnie laughed. He didn’t notice the pained tone in which the child made her confession.

‘Cross and swears, eh, little one? That’s a good sign, not a bad one. People are always cross when they’re getting well.’

‘Oh, then I don’t mind his being cross; but, Dr. Birnie, will you be very kind, and do me a favour?’

She looked up at the doctor timidly, as though she was taking a great liberty.

‘A favour? Eh, what is it? Has your doll got the measles, or does Lion want a cough mixture?’

The child laughed for a moment, tickled by the notion; but her face resumed its serious expression again directly.

‘No, it isn’t that, Dr. Birnie; but I want you to ask grandfather not to swear at me. It hurts me here.’

She put her hand on her heart, and spoke with such earnest emphasis, that the doctor stopped on the threshold of the house, which they had just reached, and looked earnestly in her face.

‘Poor little thing!’ he said, laying his hand kindly on her smoothly plaited hair, ‘what a shame it is!’ Then, without answering Gertie Heckett’s petition, he ran rapidly up the stairs, the child following him.

Mr. Josh Heckett, the invalid, was in bed when the doctor entered; that is, he was lying partially dressed, with a dirty counterpane flung over him and the pillows propped up under his head. The said head was covered with surgical bandages, and a considerable portion of the face below was ‘discoloured and bruised. That Mr. Heckett was in pain was evident, for every time he moved—and he was very restless—he drew liberally from that well of Saxon, impure and defiled, which is so largely patronized by the free-born Englishman who wishes to add force to his conversation.

He was a strange-looking invalid, with his burly limbs and giant strength lying prostrate, like a lightning-stricken oak, and he was surrounded by strange companions. Round the walls, wherever a nail could be driven, hung cages full of all sorts and conditions of birds, from the parrot to the lark. Lying about on the floor, in various attitudes of repose, were two toy terriers, a fox-hound, and a fierce and exceptionally ugly bull-dog. A pretty King Charles spaniel, with a litter of puppies, occupied an empty box in one of the corners, and scattered about the room in picturesque confusion were rabbits in hutches, squirrels in revolving cages, guinea-pigs, and white mice, and a few other animals, who had rolled themselves up so completely into a ball for their noonday siesta, that it was quite impossible to say what they were until they condescended to disentangle their heads from their tails.

The central figure of the group, however, was a splendid mastiff dog. He lay at the foot of Heckett’s bed, a perfect picture of unstudied grace. His leonine head was slightly on one side, as though listening for a footstep, and his paws were crossed in front of him. His sleek fawn coat shone like velvet, and spoke of some one’s constant care and attention. There was something of contempt for the other inhabitants of the room in the dog’s look at times. When the other dogs barked, he would glare towards them with a lazy, sneering expression, as much as to say, ‘Poor idiots! what are you frightened about?’ But suddenly he became agitated himself, and sprang from the floor. He uttered a deep growl, and crouched in an attitude of attack, There was a footstep on the stairs. The door opened, and Dr Birnie walked in.

At sight of him the dog dropped his tail, and, growling, slunk back into the corner of the room, with his eyes steadily fixed on the doctor, half in dislike, half in fear.

‘Why don’t you teach that brute not to growl at me, Heckett?’ said Dr. Birnie, seizing a rabbit-hutch by the bedside, and sitting on it, much to the terror of the occupant.

‘It’s his natur,’ the man answered. ‘He don’t like you; he’s a very good judge, is Lion—he knows my pals in a minute.’

‘I suppose you mean he knows your friends from your enemies?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he ought not to growl at me. I’m one of your friends.’

‘You’re friendly as long as it suits yer purpose, that’s all.’

‘All right, Heckett; have it your own way. How’s the head?’

‘Orful; can’t sleep with it.’

‘Let’s look at it again.’

With a hand as gentle as a woman’s, Birnie removed the bandages, and examined the wounded man.

After carefully looking at a rapidly healing wound, he put back the strappings and the linen, and felt the patient’s pulse.

‘All right, Heckett, you’re going on well. You’ll be able to get out in a week. By Jove! I thought it was all up with you that night you sent for me in a hurry. I didn’t expect you’d live till the morning.’

‘But I did, ye see; and I mean to live a good bit longer yet. Josh Heckett isn’t going to snuff: it just for a crack on the head.’

‘No, you weren’t born to die that way, Josh.’

The invalid glanced up at the doctor’s face with a look of such intense rage that it convulsed his swollen features, and made him cry out with pain.

‘Mind what you say, governor,’ he hissed, clinching his fist under the counterpane. ‘If I come to a bad end there’s others as ‘ll have to be in the same boat with me.’

The doctor laughed, and turned the conversation.

‘How does Gertie manage?’

‘Oh, all right. She’s a kind wench; I don’t know what I should do without her. She’s a fust-class nuss, and she attends the animiles, and she can talk to the customers better nor I can.’

‘Well, then, why do you swear at her?’

The man looked at him a moment as if he had not heard aright.

‘Swear at her! Why, you’ll ask me why I looks at her next. There ain’t nothin’ in swearing at anybody, is there? ‘Tain’t hitting of ‘em, is it?’

Mr. Josh Heckett was lost in amazement. The doctor objected to his swearing at Gertie. Why, he swore at everything—at the dogs, at the guinea-pigs, at the chairs and tables, at himself—why should he make an exception of Gertie?

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he added, when he had fully realized the enormity of the objection. ‘This here’s a free country, and a cove ain’t to swear at his own gal. Oh, crikey!

‘Well, don’t do it, Josh; that’s all I ask you. The girl’s a good little lass, and she doesn’t like it.’

Josh Heckett pulled himself up in bed.

‘Look here, Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., you get my head well, that’s your business. Me and my gal’s got on pretty well without your assistance up to now, and we’re wery much obliged, but “declined with thanks,” as they sez in the noose-papers. Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., drop it.’

‘You’re facetious to-day, Josh. Never mind; you’re always glad enough to send for me when you’re in a mess.’

‘Yes, and you was very glad of my services once.’

The doctor’s brow darkened as he muttered:

‘That was a bad time for a good many of us—a time we should like to forget.’

‘I dessay,’ growled Heckett; ‘and as you’d like other people to forget too. You’ve got on in the world, and rolls your eyes hup, and does the wirtuous now. I can’t afford to.’

‘You’ve had no end of money,’ said the doctor. ‘Heaven only knows what you do with it. Why do you keep on this wretched den, and these wretched animals? You could afford to retire and live decently and in comfort.’

‘No, I couldn’t. I’ve spent all the money I ever made. You don’t believe it, but I have. Besides, I must keep on this place. If I hadn’t a crib like this, how could I live? It isn’t so respectable as the old crib you and Egerton and Marston, and all the lot of you, was glad enough to come to once, perhaps, but it soots me quite as well.’

The man winked at the doctor as well as his bruised face would let him. The doctor thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked up and down the room, treading on the toy terrier’s tail, and narrowly escaping a grab from the bull-dog in consequence.

‘Heckett, do you ever think what might have happened if Marston had turned traitor?’

The invalid went pale on the only side of his face that could change colour.

‘Don’t talk like that,’ he growled. ‘I ain’t well, and it worrits me. Bah! he’s died in furrin parts, or gone too stone broke ever to get ‘ome agin. I ain’t always sure as may be it wasn’t him as done it. What did he bolt to America for directly afterwards? Only he hadn’t no motive, and the other had, and I allus looks at motives. Besides, anyway, it ‘ud be wus for you, now Egerton’s drownded, than it would for me. You’re better off now than you wos then, and he might want to go snacks, perhaps. A poor cove like me wouldn’t be high enough game for him to fly at.’

Birnie glanced at the old dog-fancier, as he lay with his grey hair straggling over his bandaged head.

‘You’re very poor, aren’t you, Heckett!’ he said presently with a peculiar intonation in his voice.

‘Yes, I am. Curse you! what do you look like that at me for? Perhaps you think I ain’t poor? Perhaps you thinks as I’m Baron Rotschild, a-livin’ in this here drum for the benefit o’ my ‘elth? Perhaps you thinks as I lends money to the Emperor O’ Rooshia at five per cent., and only goes out after dark, for fear the Goverment should call in the day-time for a loan, and have to go away without it?’ The old man rose in the bed, his body quivering with rage.

‘Nonsense, Heckett!’ said the doctor, trying to quiet him.

‘What a queer old fellow you are! Of course you’re poor. Why, you wouldn’t worry me for money as you do if you weren’t.’

‘No, of course, I shouldn’t.’

‘There, there,’ continued the doctor, arranging his pillows and smoothing the bandage that Heckett had moved in his excitement; ‘lie still and get well; that’s what you’ve got to do. I’ll come and see you again in a day or two.’

The doctor nodded to his patient, tumbled over the bulldog, and made a bolt for the door. Outside Gertie was waiting for him.

‘Your grandfather’s better, my child,’ he said. ‘He’ll be about in a week again. Good-bye.’

Dr. Birnie patted her face and went out of the door. He walked rapidly up Little Queer Street and through the Dials, making his way into New Oxford Street. Then he turned up past the Museum, and into Russell Square. Leaving the square, and turning into one of the streets branching off from it, he became aware of something shiny on a doorstep that seemed to shine right at him.

He looked up.

He nodded pleasantly, for he had recognised the highly polished face of Mr. Duck, the clerk of his legal advisers.

‘Fine morning, Mr. Duck!’

‘Doctor,’ gasped the shiny one, running after him, and grabbing him by the coat-tails, for Birnie had walked on rapidly, ‘Doctor, one moment. I wish you’d come in and see Mrs. Turvey. She’s quite queer in her head. I can’t make her out.’

‘What, Mr. Egerton’s housekeeper?’

‘Yes, doctor. She’s quite light-headed. Swears she’s seen his ghost. Just come in and see her, sir, if you will. It’s the rummest case I ever heard of.’

The doctor walked back with Mr. Jabez.

‘It’s shock to the system,’ he said; ‘that’s all. When did she hear the news of his death?’

‘Last night, sir,’ answered Mr. Duck. ‘I told her, sir. Thought it was best. Old and faithful servant, sir—very much attached. He’s left her five hundred pounds in his will—as of course you know, sir, being executor.’

‘Of course,’ muttered the doctor, and then he silently followed his guide into Gurth Egerton’s house.

As he passed through the hall, and saw the late owner’s picture hanging there, his memory went back to a time when he, Oliver Birnie, and this very Gurth Egerton were companions in adversity, and were not quite sure where their next pound was coming from.

Now he was a rising practitioner, with a balance at his banker’s, and Gurth—well, Gurth had been drowned in the Bon Espoir, and had left his housekeeper five hundred pounds.