"Why ?" "Oh! Nothing," said Ossipon, gazing earnestly and quivering inwardly with the desire to find out something, but obviously intimidated by the little man's overwhelming air of unconcern.

When talking with this comrade--which happened but rarely--the big Ossipon suffered from a sense of moral and even physical insignificance.

However, he ventured another question.

"Did you walk down here ?" "No; omnibus," the little man answered readily enough.

He lived far away in Islington, in a small house down a shabby street, littered with straw and dirty paper, where out of school hours a troop of assorted children ran and squabbled with a shrill, joyless, rowdy clamour.