 some time in silence. When their eyes at
last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied his thoughts,
aloud, as if he had been speaking all the while.
    »You see, Walter,« he said, »in truth this business is merely a habit with
me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live if I relinquished
it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uniform was worn,«
pointing out towards the little midshipman, »then indeed, fortunes were to be
made, and were made. But competition, competition - new invention, new invention
- alteration, alteration - the world's gone past me. I hardly know where I am
myself; much less where my customers are.«
    »Never mind 'em, Uncle!«
    »Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for instance -
and that's ten days,« said Solomon, »I don't remember more than one person that
has come into the shop.«
    »Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign -«
    »That's the one,« said Solomon.
    »Why, Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to
Mile-End Turnpike?«
    »Oh! it's true,« said Solomon, »I forgot her. Two persons.«
    »To be sure, they didn't buy anything,« cried the boy.
    »No. They didn't buy anything,« said Solomon, quietly.
    »Nor want anything,« cried the boy.
    »No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop,« said Solomon, in the same
tone.
    »But there were two of 'em, Uncle,« cried the boy, as if that were a great
triumph. »You said only one.«
    »Well, Wally,« resumed the old man, after a short pause »not being like the
Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island, we can't live on a man who asks
for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way to Mile-End
Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but
I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be,
apprentices are not the same, business is not the same,
