-- Tackleton the Toy-merchant, was a man whose
vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents
and Guardians. If they had made him a Money
Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer,
or a Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats
in his youth, and, after having had the full run of
himself in ill-natured transactions, might have turned
out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little freshness
and novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the peace-
able pursuit of toy-making, he was a domestic Ogre,
who had been living on children all his life, and was
their implacable enemy. He despised all toys;
wouldn't have bought one for the world; delighted,
in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the
faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to
market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers' con-
sciences, moveable old ladies who darned stockings or
carved pies; and other like samples of his stock-in-
trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hair, red-eyed
Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tum-
blers who wouldn't lie down, and were perpetually
flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance;
his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief,
and safety-valve. He was great in such inventions.
Anything suggestive of a Pony-nightmare, was de-
licious to him. He had even lost money (and he
took to that toy very kindly) by getting up Goblin
slides for magic-lanterns, whereon the Powers of
Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural
shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the por-
traiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital;
and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for
the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk,
a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those
monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind
of any young gentleman between the ages of six and
eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer
Vacation.

  What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in
other things. You may easily suppose, therefore,
that within the great green cape, which reached down
to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up to the
chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was
about as choice a spirit, and as agreeable a compan-
ion, as ever stood in a pair of bull-headed looking
boots with mahogany-coloured tops.

  Still, Tackleton, the toy-merchant, was going to be
married. In spite of all this, he was going to be
married. And to a young wife too, a beautiful young
wife.

  He didn't look much like a bridegroom, as he stood
in the Carrier's kitchen, with a twist in his dry face,
and a screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the
bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the
bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-
conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one
little eye, like the concentrated essence of any number
of ravens. But, a Bridegroom he designed to be.

  'In three days' time. Next Thursday. The last
day of the first month in the year. That's my wed-
ding day,' said Tackleton.

  Did I mention that he had always one eye wide
open, and one eye nearly shut; and that the one eye
nearly shut, was always the expressive eye? I don t
think I did.

  'That's my wedding-day!' said Tackleton, rattling
his money.

  'Why, it's our wedding-day too,' exclaimed the
Carrier.

  'Ha ha!' laughed Tackleton. 'Odd! You're just
such another couple. Just!'

  The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous asser-
tion is not to be described. What next? His imagina-
tion would compass the possibility of just such an-
other Baby, perhaps. The man was mad.

  'I say! A word with you,' murmured Tackleton,
nudging the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him
a little apart. 'You'll come to the wedding? We're
in the same boat, you know.'

  'How in the same boat?' inquired the Carrier.

  'A little disparity, you know'; said Tackleton, with
another nudge. 'Come and spend an evening with
us, beforehand.'

  'Why?' demanded John, astonished at this pressing
hospitality.

  'Why?' returned the other. 'That's a new way