But not with these contrasts, nor with any lesson that they may teach, have you and I to deal now. Our attention is fixed upon the striking of eight o'clock by the sonorous tongue of Westminster. And not our attention alone--for many of the friends with whom we shall presently shake hands are listening also; so that we find ourselves suddenly plunged into very various company. Ben Sparrow, the old grocer, who, just as One tolls, is weighing out a quarter of a pound of brown sugar for a young urchin without a cap, inclines his head and listens, for all the world as if he _were_ a sparrow, so birdlike is the movement: Bessie Sparrow, his granddaughter, who, having put Tottie to bed, is coming downstairs in the dark (she has left the candle in the washhand-basin in Tottie's room, for Tottie cannot go to sleep without a light), stops and counts from One to Eight, and thinks the while, with eyes that have tears in them, of Somebody who at the same moment is thinking of her: Tottie, with one acid-drop very nearly at the point of dissolution in her mouth, and with another perspiring in her hand, lies in bed and listens and forgets to suck until the sound dies quite away: a patient-looking woman, pausing in the contemplation of a great crisis in her life, seeks to find in the tolling of the bell some assurance of a happy result: James Million, Member of Parliament, whose name, as he is a very rich man, may be said to be multitudinous, listens also as he rolls by in his cab; and as his cab passes the end of the street in which Mrs. Naldret resides, that worthy woman, who is standing on a chair before an open cupboard, follows the sound, with the tablecloth in her hand, and mutely counts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, the last number being accompanied by a resigned sigh, as if Eight were the end of all things.
The room in which Mrs. Naldret is standing is poor and comfortable; a cheerful fire is burning, and the kettle is making up its mind to begin to sing. An old black cat is lazily blinking her eyes at the little jets of gas that thrust their forked tongues from between the bars of the stove. This cat is lying on a faded hearthrug, in which once upon a time a rampant lion reigned in brilliant colours; and she is not at all disturbed by the thought that a cat lying full-length upon a lion, with his tongue hanging out, is an anomaly in nature and a parody in art. There is certainly some excuse for her in the circumstance that the lion is very old, and is almost entirely rubbed out.