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"Here's the last," he would cry, the very last -- ha'penny for the lot. Don't let me go home to my wife and children a starvin'." (Which he was delirious when he uttered it, for he allays said to me, "Dick, be honest, and die poor, for it's agin the Scripters for a rich man to git to heaven.") But I was goin' to tell you about Nelly. Father wasn't more than decent buried, before somebody came to look at the room. He was a tall, pale man, as had sunk eyes an' holler cheeks, but his eyes were as black as black could be, an' his cheeks were as red as two roses. The room wasn't much to boast of, to be sure, but it were home to me, an' I hated to leave it. There were a bed in it, an' two chairs, and precious proud I were of them. Then we had a skillet an' a coffee-pot, an' two cups that had lost their saucers, and two saucers that, vicy wersy, had lost their cups, so they'd got mixed together, promiscus, one set red, an' the other blue.

The man he looked round, and then there was somethin' sad and fixed in his eyes that made me shiver, though in gen'l I ain't the shivery sort. I've seen a man pitched out of his cart, and the wheels run over him, an there wasn't half that dreadful feeling it give me to see that poor man's eyes. It was as if he said, I'm all dead but my body, my hope is dead, my faith is dead, and my heart is dead. I'm a sepulchre, and my eyes is the tombstones, an' my face is writ all over with epithets, or whatever you call what's said about dead men.

Says he, "Did you live here?" turning to me, an' there was somethin' grand in his manner, too, as if it was used to bein' there and couldn't help it.

In course I told him I did, but the premises was too large for me, now that my family was rejuiced.

"To how many?" ses he.

"To one," ses I, "an' that's myself. I'm all my own family now." "And if I understand right, you want to sell the things?"

"Well, yes," I said, hesitating, an' I 'spose men haven't felt much worse what give the last look to all their splendid furniture as they must part with, than I did, as I remembered how daddy had often set in one o' them cheers, makin' matches, an' me in the other, helpin' of him, an' thought of the chany teapot an' broken nose, an' the cardboard cover that I manufactured myself, when tother got broke, and the two cups with the other cup's saucers.

"I don't see as I can do any better," said the grand looking man with the holler cheeks, and the thin coat buttoned close up to his throat; an' he sighed as he spoke.

"Have you decided upon the price of these things as they stand?" he asked me again, with a look as put me in mind of a starving man a wantin' to buy a loaf, an' not money enough to do it with. I told him what my price was, an' then he asked me would I take so much a week, till it was paid? I told him I had expected to go out o' matches if I got the money down, and that I'd rather not wait, if he pleased.

It wasn't as he pleased, he said, but he'd been expectin' a little money as was sure to come, and didn't like to spend every shillin' he had for them. God help them, his little Nelly would starve. Well, we talked it over, and finally I said I'd see next day, and we'd come to terms somehow. I thought it would be more manly and independent-like to put it off for a little, even though I'd made it up in my mind that I'd got to let him have it.

The next day came, and he came with it. He brought his little girl this time; and my eyes! but I never see anything so like a picture. Such pretty, bright hair, and such cheeks! an' so little, she looked like a wax doll that you manages with a string that's hid somewheres to open her eyes

"This isn't a nice place, papa," said the little lady, her lips all of a quiver.

"It's the best papa can get," said the man, and he turned to the window with this face se hard like, though his thin lips trembled, too. It wasn't a fine prospect opposite, that you may believe. Me and father never troubled ourselves about that, 'cause we were born into it, as you might say. The room over there was a ragged room. It always had been a ragged room, and never respectable in our time. The window was full of rags; there was a bundle of rags inside, that got tipsy sometimes, and turned the other rags out of the window -- and then there was sights to be seen, till paper, mostly bits of old playbills, was pasted over, and when that was torn off rags generally came round again. Paper is considered the most respectable, when well put ip, but rags is the lowest stages -- next to nothing at all.

"She's been used to see a bit of green," he said, in that sad voice of his. "Poor child! poor little child!"

"Don't cry, papa, and I'll be very good," said the little lady, whispering; "I don't mind, you know." He didn't look like crying then, but I knowed by that that he had been at it sometime, and she had caught him.

"Well, my boy, do you agree to my terms?" he asked at last, sitting down in one of the old chairs, and drawing little Nellie between his knees.