"I suppose he was buried in foreign parts," replied the old gentleman, with considerable grumpiness, "since he died in foreign parts."

"O, he died abroad, did he? Can you tell me where?"

"No, sir, I can't," replied Mr. Grewter, with increasing grumpiness; "I didn't trouble myself about other people's affairs then, and I don't trouble myself about them now, and I don't particularly care to be troubled about them by strangers."

I made the meekest possible apology for my intrusion, but the outraged Grewter was not appeased.

"Your best apology will be not doing it again," he replied. "Those that know my habits know that I take half an hour's nap after dinner. My constitution requires it, or I shouldn't take it. If I didn't happen to have a strange warehouseman on my premises, you wouldn't have been allowed to disturb me two afternoons running."

Finding Mr. Grewter unappeasable, I left him, and went to seek a more placable spirit in the shape of Anthony Sparsfield, carver and gilder, of Barbican.

I found the establishment of Sparsfield and Son, carvers and gilders. It was a low dark shop, in the window of which were exhibited two or three handsomely carved frames, very much the worse for flies, and one oil-painting, of a mysterious and Rembrandtish character. The old-established air that pervaded almost all the shops in this neighbourhood was peculiarly apparent in the Sparsfield establishment.

In the shop I found a mild-faced man of about forty engaged in conversation with a customer. I waited patiently while the customer finished a minute description of the kind of frame he wanted made for a set of proof engravings after Landseer; and when the customer had departed, I asked the mild-faced man if I could see Mr. Sparsfield.

"I am Mr. Sparsfield," he replied politely.

"Not Mr. Anthony Sparsfield?"

"Yes, my name is Anthony."

"I was given to understand that Mr. Anthony Sparsfield was a much older person."

"O, I suppose you mean my father," replied the mild-faced man. "My father is advanced in years, and does very little in the business nowadays; not but what his head is as clear as ever it was, and there are some of our old customers like to see him when they give an order."

This sounded hopeful. I told Mr. Sparsfield the younger that I was not a customer, and then proceeded to state the nature of my business. I found him as courteous as Mr. Grewter had been disobliging.

"Me and father are old-fashioned people," he said; "and we're not above living over our place of business, which most of the Barbican tradespeople are nowadays. The old gentleman is taking tea in the parlour upstairs at this present moment, and if you don't mind stepping up to him, I'm sure he'll be proud to give you any information he can. He likes talking of old times."