place. In one week, if you are clever, you ’ave made thousands of pounds—thousands and thousands. Is it not so, Mr. Tan? When you are just a little bit older, a few years—then you shall come. And you ask for your friend. Mr. Emilio Zanti—because I like you. We will be friends, is not that so?”
And he held out his large fat hand and grasped Peter's small and rather damp one. Then he bent even closer, still holding Peter's hand: “Do you know one thing?” he whispered.
“No,” replied Peter, husky with awe.
“It is this, that when you think of Mr. Zanti and of London and of adventures, you will look in a looking-glass—any looking-glass, and you will see—what you will see,” and he nodded all over his fat face.
Peter was entirely overcome by this last astonishing statement, and was very relieved to hear numbers of clocks in the curiosity shop strike five o'clock. He got off his chair, said good-bye very politely indeed, and hurried up the dark street.
For the moment even his beloved Stephen was forgotten, and looking-glasses, the face of Mr. Emilio Zanti, London streets, and Zachary's silver candlesticks were mingled confusedly in his brain.
III
And indeed throughout the dreary supper Peter's brain was in a whirl. It often happened that supper passed without a word of conversation from first to last. His father very rarely said anything, Peter never said anything at all, and if Aunt Jessie did venture on a little conversation she received so slender an encouragement that she always forsook the attempt after a very short time. It was a miserable meal.
It was cold beef and beetroot and blanc-mange with a very, very little strawberry jam round the edges of the glass dish, and there was a hard red cheese and little stiff woolly biscuits.
But old grandfather Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous complaints were as regular an accompaniment
