case his strange employer should appear and ask what had become of it), he led a happy, quiet, studious kind of life, after his own heart.
But though the books were never so interesting, and never so full of novelty to Tom, they could not so enchain him, in those mysterious chambers, as to render him unconscious for a moment of the lightest sound. Any footstep on the flags without, set him listening attentively, and when it turned into that house, and came up, up, up, the stairs, he always thought with a beating heart, "Now I am coming face to face with him, at last!" But no footstep ever passed the floor immediately below: except his own.
This mystery and loneliness engendered fancies in Tom's mind, the folly of which his common sense could readily discover, but which his common sense was quite unable to keep away, notwithstanding; that quality being with most of us, in such a case, like the old French Police—quick at detection, but very weak as a preventive power. Misgivings, undefined, absurd, inexplicable, that there was some one hiding in the inner room; walking softly overhead, peeping in through the door-chink; doing something stealthy, anywhere where he was not; came over him a hundred times a day: making it pleasant to throw up the sash, and hold communication even with the sparrows who had built in the roof and water-spout, and were twittering about the windows all day long.
He sat with the outer door wide open at all times, that he might hear the footsteps as they entered, and turned off into the chambers on the lower floors. He formed odd prepossessions too, regarding strangers in the streets; and would say within himself of such or such a man, who struck him as having anything uncommon in his dress or aspect, "I shouldn't wonder now if that were he!" But it never was. And though he actually turned back and followed more than one of these suspected individuals, in a singular belief that they were going to the place he was then upon his way from, he never got any other satisfaction by it, than the satisfaction of knowing it was not the case.
Mr. Fips, of Austin Friars, rather deepened than illumined the obscurity of his position; for on the first occasion of Tom's waiting on him to receive his weekly pay, he said:
"Oh! by-the-bye, Mr. Pinch, you needn't mention it, if you please!"
Tom thought he was going to tell him a secret; so he said that he wouldn't on any account, and that Mr. Fips might entirely depend upon him. But as Mr. Fips said "Very good," in reply, and nothing more, Tom prompted him:
"Not on any account," repeated Tom.
Mr. Fips repeated "Very good."
"You were going to say"—Tom hinted.
"Oh dear no!" cried Fips. "Not at all." However, seeing Tom confused, he added, "I mean that you needn't mention any particulars about your place of employment, to people generally. You'll find it better not."
"I have not had the pleasure of seeing my employer yet, sir," observed Tom, putting his week's salary in his pocket.
"Haven't you?" said Fips. "No, I don't suppose you have though.
"I should like to thank him, and to know that what I have done so far, is done to his satisfaction," faltered Tom.
