stained with clay, their boots cloddy, and their hands earthy, as though they had just come from a job of digging. They went straight up to the bearers (taking off their clayey caps and stuffing them into the bosoms of their smock-frocks,) and laying hands on the black load, lifted it off the men's shoulders, and placed it on the grass. In an instant the bearers whisked off the grand velvet cover, and shook it, and folded it up with great care, and walked off with it, straightening their backs as they went. Then the four that had come fresh from digging took the long bare box in their earthy hands, and slung ropes about it, and lowered it into the hole before you might count ten. Now, indeed, I knew all about it-about death and the grave, and never. The lifting of the black cover from the coffin had, as it were, lifted from my eyes the haze which even my father's vivid explanation had not removed entirely, and I could see things, and hear and understand them, exactly as they were. It seemed to me that my mother was but just now dead, and that it was the men with the earthy hands who had killed her. If any one of our party felt worse than I did at that moment, I am sure they were much to be pitied; but I think none did. My father was the only one who might, but he had known all about my mother being dead ever since last Friday, and must have grown a little used to it. He knew, at the time of starting, that we were taking my mother to be buried, and could have been in no way astonished at seeing her put into the ground; but it was different with me: I had been brought, as it were, to witness her death-her sudden shutting out from life and the world in the bright sunshine, and a dozen people looking on! It was no comfort to me that everybody looked sorry. I had seen at least two of my father's thumb in a polite manner towards the publichouse. "In here'll do very well for me if it'll do for you," said my father, at the same time tapping his trousers pocket independently. So the whole party, with the four bearers, went into the public-house, and I, still holding my father's hand, went in too. As we passed the bar, Mr. Crowl nodded and whispered to the landlady; and before we had been in the parlour two minutes, the waiter brought in some beer, and some gin, and some tobacco. "How much?" asked my father, taking out his bag. 66 I settle for this," observed Mr. Crowl, waving his hand towards the bar-as a hint, I suppose, that the landlady knew all about it. "Now, when I ask a man to drink "—began my father. "My good friend, I always do it-it's a point with me; honour bright, it is," interrupted the undertaker, staying my father's too ready hand by a touch of the splint with which he was about to light his pipe. Very good," said my father, "it's all the same; my turn next." So everybody took to smoking and drinking, and in a very short time the place grew so full of smoke that I could hardly breathe; so after in vain trying to make my father understand that I wanted to go, (he had got into an argument with one of the bearers as to the proper way to pronounce the word " asparagus,”) I unpinned my sash, and leaving it on the table, slipped out of the room and ran home. CHAPTER VII. friends looking quite as downcast, and even more WHICH CHIEFLY CONCERNS THE WOMAN WHOM CRUEL FATE DECREED TO BE MY STEPMOTHER. dejected, when trade was slack; and as for Mrs. Jenkins, I had seen her cry quite as hard, and wring her hands (which now she could not do, hav- THE houses in Fryingpan Alley were let out ing the baby) when Mr. Jenkins came home drunk. in floors and single rooms. On the same floor The persons who had most cause to cry were with us there lived an Irish woman of the dry-eyed enough. My father did not cry. He name of Burke. She was a widow; her huslooked wretched enough to do it, but he didn't; band, a slater's labourer, having, a few months he only stood with his eyes cast to the ground, after his marriage, fallen from the outer slant of nibbling the peak of his cap and listening to the a roof of the ridge-and-furrow pattern, and so parson just as I have afterwards seen a prisoner hurt his spine, that he died on the evening of the in the dock listening to a very light sentence day on which he was carried to Guy's Hospital. from the lips of a judge. I didn't cry. I wanted Mrs. Burke was no favourite of mine-not beto cry very bad, but my eyes only burnt and cause she was old or ugly; on the contrary, she smarted, and the tears wouldn't come. I seemed was a much younger woman than my mother, too full of thoughts pulling this way and that and so merry as to be continually humming or way, and baulking my tears, just as one might singing, and so good-looking that no wake or fancy the rain-clouds beat about by contrary other such jollification ever took place in the winds, with no chance of settling to a down-pour. neighbourhood without Mrs. Burke receiving an The baby didn't cry, being fast asleep; but I invitation to it. My dislike for her did not arise don't think this was Mrs. Jenkins's fault. from the fact of her having carroty hair. I was not over-partial to hair of that colour, and am not to this day; but there were a good many people living in the alley whose hair was quite as red as was Mrs. Burke's, and I got along well enough with them. The parson having finished his prayers, shut the book and went away, and the party broke up. Mr. Crowl wasn't half so proud as he seemed to be at first, but walked by my father's side, chatting quite familiarly. He showed us a short cut out of the churchyard, into a by-street in which there was a public house, and waiting about just outside were the four men who carried the coffin. My chief objection was to her complexion, which was sandy. Her face and neck, and arms and hands, were dotted so closely that you could scarcely stick a pin between, with pinky-yellow spots, which in my ignorance I firmly believed Mr. Crowl finished the sentence by jerking his could have been washed off had Mrs. Burke used "Shall we go back to the house, or sufficient soap and energy. That she did not re- | Who alone had a right to do so? My mother move them, but allowed them to remain and accumulate, (I suppose that they did not accumulate, but that they did was decidedly my impression at the time,) was to my mind a convincing proof that she was an unclean person, and one whom it would be better to have as little to do with as possible. Under such circumstances, it was not to be wondered at that I could by no manner of means relish Mrs. Burke's victuals. Nothing she could offer me-and, like all Irish people, she was mighty generous and free-handed, especially with her cupboard store-could conquer my dislike. I have refused her batter pudding (baked under pork, and steaming from the bake-house) on the plea that I wasn't the least hungry, and two minutes afterwards she has met me deep in the enjoyment of a slice of bread of my mother's cutting. If she gave me an apple, I could not eat it until I had pared off the rind ruinously thick. I have taken her baked potatoes and artfully conveyed them down-stairs, and hid them in the dust-bin. "Did you like the praties, Jimmy? "Yes, thanky, ma'am; they were very nice." And at that very moment up has come Mrs. Burke's cat, with one of the identical potatoes in her jaws, laying it, all ashes as it was, on Mrs. Burke's clean hearth, and munching it up under her nose. There was no love lost between myself and Mrs. Burke after that time. She never met me but she gave me an evil look, and once she called me "a mite of shtuck-up thrumpery," of which I told my mother, who took an early opportunity of asking her what she meant by it. She laughed "See now, Mrs. Ballisat! see the mischief the little rogues might make between friendly folks wid their funny mistakes! Me call the darlint 'a mite of shtuck-up thrumpery,' indeed! Mary forbid, ma'am. What I did call him 'a mighty tip-top thrumpeter,' and that bekase of the illigant voice that he has, for ever making itself heard about the house. Get out wid you, Master Jim; divil a compliment you'll get again out of me for one while." She was always extremely civil to my parents, which was not very surprising, considering the large quantities of vegetables my father used to give her, because of her being a lone woman. It was Mrs. Burke whom I found occupying our room when I ran home from the publichouse where my father was staying. As it was growing towards dusk, nobody noticed me as I came up the alley, and I crept in and went upstairs. I didn't hurry up, as might be expected of a little boy who had had nothing to eat since breakfast. I had a vague notion that now it was all right in our room, but I was far from certain. I kept close to the wall, and stole noiselessly as high as the first landing of our flight, and peeped round the corner. So far all was right; for the door, which for several days had been kept fast locked, and the key kept down in Jenkins's room, was now ajar. I could see the wall that faced the fireplace through the open chink, and to my very great surprise the light of a fire was reflected on it. Never through all my life can I forget the queer sensations that for a moment beset me. Who could have lit the fire in our room? and no one else. Dusk was my time of coming home from play; it was tea-time. Times out of number I had come home exactly at this same time, and found my mother busy at the fireplace, putting sticks on the fire to make the kettle boil, ready for my father, so that he might not be kept waiting a moment. The light against the wall was just such as would be made by the reflection of blazing sticks. Was it, after all, a misapprehension on my part? Was it all a happy mistake about the black load and the pit-hole? Should I find my mother in the room, as she was when I last entered it five days ago, and saw her there? I don't mean to say that all these thoughts passed through my mind with the distinctness with which they are here set down, but they all combined to make the glorious maze that suddenly fell on me. In the maze I found my way right up to the door, and there I met with certain cruel facts that brought me to my senses suddenly, as a dash of cold water in the face of one that faints. I could see a little bit of the floor of our room through the door-chink -a very little bit, but enough to show me that the place had been very recently scrubbed. There was the sound of rocking a chair in the room, and of a woman singing. The voice was a droning voice, and unmistakably Irish. I knew at once that it could belong to no one else but Mrs. Burke. I ventured to push the door just a very little, and to take a peep inside. It was Mrs. Burke. She was sitting by the fireside, in a clean cotton gown, and with her Sunday cap on, rocking my little baby sister, and singing to her. The tea-things were neatly laid on the table, and the room was filled with the comfortable smell of toast. Everybody had been so busy that day over my mother's funeral, that (I think I mentioned this before, by the way) I had missed my dinner, and was very hungry. It was a great temptation, but my squeamishness instantly stepped in with a picture of Mrs. Burke's freckled arms and hands. "If I go in," thought I, "she will be sure to ask me to eat some of the toast she has been making, and I would much rather not. I'd much sooner go without. I'll wait outside here until my father comes home." At that unlucky moment, however, Mrs. Burke's cat came out of the back-room, and smelling out where her mistress was, gave a mew, and, butting the door wide open, walked in. Mrs. Burke paused in her droning, and looking round to see who had opened the door, spied me before I could shrink back. "Ah, thin! is it yourself, Jimmy, jewel?" said she, in a kinder voice than I had ever yet heard her use. "Come in, thin, darlint, and take your place on your little shtool by the fire." "I don't want. I'm warm out here." "Come in now, like a dear, and sit ye down, and take your tay like a little gintleman," urged Mrs. Burke, coaxing me forward with her forefinger. There was no use in refusing; so in I went, sulky enough. But, wrong-headed boy that I was! I had scarcely taken six steps in at the doorway before I was filled with remorse for my ungrateful behaviour. The good Irishwoman had made our and he didn't like it? Course he wouldn't. That's Jim all over. I know him." "Oh no, ma'am ! he didn't call father names; he only would have it that sparrowgrass was something else,-that was all the talk." Mrs. Burke made no answer, but began laugh way than ever. By and by she laid the baby down on the bed, and, fetching a broom from her own room, swept up some ashes that had fallen, and rearranged the fire-irons. Then she took the china butter-boat off the hob, gave it a polish with her apron, and stood it back again. After giving several other things a finishing touch, she retired outside the door, and then put in her head as a visitor might, and took a rapid glance round; then she crossed over to the fireplace, and altered the butter-boat slightly, so that a looker-in at the door might obtain at a glance a broadside view of its splendour. Convincing herself by a second glance that her arrangements were perfect, she took the baby up and went to the window with it in her arms, and there remained looking towards Turnmill Street till it grew quite dark; then she neatly closed the curtains, and set up a candle in a brass candlestick, that was so bright that you could see your face in it. I think she must have observed the admiring gaze with which I regarded the bright candlestick, for said she— place bright as a new pin. Anyone might have taken his tea there like a gentleman. Never in my life had I seen our room looking so beautiful. The stove was as black and almost as shiny as Mr. Crowl's hat, and the hearth-even that part of it on which the ashes dropped-was as white as a cut turnip. Ours was not a very nice set of fire-ing and chirping to the baby in a more cheerful irons-indeed, we only possessed a bent poker and a cinder shovel; but now resting against the fireplace was a magnificent set, bright as silver. They were Mrs. Burke's fire-irons, as I knew instantly from the crinkly pattern of their stems, and the shape of their knobs. The ornaments on the mantel-shelf were polished up, the floor scrubbed white and finely sanded, and before the fireplace a clean bit of carpet was 'spread. It was Mrs, Burke's tea-tray on which our crockery stood, and the tea-spoons, genteelly placed in the cups, belonged also to Mrs. Burke. I was accustomed to take my tea out of a tin pot, but now, standing in the old place, by the side of my father's cup and saucer, was a china mug, with gold letters on it-"A present from Tunbridge." There was a spoon in the mug, as in the cups. And this was not all. Being a woman without children, and natty in her ways, Mrs. Burke had fixed up a sideboard in her room, and on it were arranged all sorts of odd bits of china and glass. The centre ornament of the lot, and one that she prized before all the others, (as was evident from its having a fancifully-cut piece of yellow satin to stand on,) was a china butter-boat-very old-man!" fashioned, but of gorgeous design, and coloured green and blue, and scarlet-with the heads of the rivets that fastened on the cracked spout, bright as spangles. Well, there was the china butter-boat on the hob, with baby's pap in it, and very beautiful it looked with the light of the fire glowing on its crimson and green side. "Where's daddy, Jimmy?" asked Mrs. Burke, taking off my cap, and tidily hanging it on a nail behind the door. "Did you leave him in the churchyard, Jimmy?" Close by there, ma'am." "Where's close by, sonny? "At the public-house, ma'am." "Waitin' to take a shmall dhrop at the bar to put him in life a little, poor man," observed Mrs. Burke, raising a corner of her clean apron to her eye. "Never mind. Don't cry, Jimmy," (I wasn't crying nor thinking about it;) "he'll be here directly, I'll be bound." "He wasn't at the bar, ma'am; he was inside the room, sitting down with the burying-men." "Sitting down, was he?" said she, chirping to the baby, and tickling its little fat chin kindly. Cryin', Jimmy, was he?" "He was smoking his pipe, and having some gin, ma'am." "Oh! it's a darlin'!' cried Mrs. Burke, with a sudden gush of affection for my little sister. "Did he sind you off, Jim? What did he say?" "I heard him tell the man that 'them that growed sparrow grass and sold it, ought to know how to spell it better than them who now and then got a sniff of it passing a cook-shop.' He was a good mind to have a row with the man, I think. I heard him say that he always wanted to pull a man's nose when he called things by flash names." "Was the man callin' him flash names? Did he keep callin' yer daddy 'sir,' and 'Mr. Ballisat,' "We must give the dirty thing a rub, Jimmy; it isn't so clane as you've been used to see it, my "It is ten times cleaner, ma'am," returned I, honestly; "it's beautiful." "Well, maybe it'll pass; but your daddy's so perticlar, you know; he'll be grumblin' about that dirthy ould butther-boat, don't ye think, Jimmy?" "What dirty butter-boat, ma'am?" "That on the hob with the baby's pap in it, Jimmy." 66 Dirty! it isn't dirty; nothing's dirty, ex cept Except what? out with it! except what, now?" Mrs. Burke flushed red as she said this, and spoke very quick and sharp; perhaps it was lucky for me that she did, for in my ignorant eyes the only exception to the prevailing cleanliness was her freckled face and hands, and that was what I was about to tell her. Seeing, however, how she was likely to take it, like the little hypocrite I was, I replied to her impatient demand for an explanation Except me, ma'am. Here's dirty hands!" My sin carried its sting. Uttering an exclamation as though never in the course of her life she had seen hands so hideously dirty (though, in truth, they were more than usually clean,) she laid the baby down, and taking me into her own room, there gave my face as well as my hands such a scrubbing with yellow soap and the corner of a rough towel as brought the tears to my eyes. Then with her own comb she combed my hair, and with her own oil oiled it; and somehow or another, contrived a curl on either temple. Then she turned my pinafore, and brought the brass buckle of my belt well to the front, and gave it a rub to brighten it. "Will you have your tea now, Jimmy; or will you wait a little till daddy comes home?" asked she, when she had set me on my stool by the fire. For a considerable time before this I had been con- | worse misfortunes at say." And then she turned templating the pile of toast inside the fender, my to, briskly mending the fire, and sweeping and increasing hunger doing battle against my deep- dusting. She wiped the soot from the butterseated prejudice against Mrs. Burke's freckles. boat, and gave it a polish on her canvas apron; The latter lost ground rapidly. To be sure, she she turned the pile of toast topside bottom; and had taken the bread in her hands to cut; but fetching her hair-brush from the back room, everything objectionable must have departed from smoothed my hair with it. Then she folded up it in the process of toasting. But then, she had the sack she had just finished, and laid it on the to butter it! True again; but the butter on the top of the other three. Then she went and top round was by this time nearly all frizzled in. fetched stuff for another sack, and sat down to Thought I, "If she should ask me to have a piece work again quite comfortable. of toast, I will say yes, and take that top piece." But, unfortunately, just as she asked me, "Would I have my tea now, or wait until my father came home?" she stooped to blow off a "black" that had settled on the side of the butter-boat, and her freckled arm actually touched the crust of that very top round. "I'll wait a little, thanky, ma'am," said I. "I am not very hungry." Mrs. Burke worked at making potato-sacks; I was roused from dozing on my stool by the sound of my father's footsteps, blundering and uncertain, on the stairs. He pushed open the door and came in. CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MRS. BURKE COURTS MY FATHER. and when I told her that I would rather not begin COME in, Mr. Ballisat," said Mrs. Burke, in a my tea at present, she went into her own room, and in a minute returned, bringing with her three ready-made sacks and the materials for a fourth. The ready-made sacks she placed on a chair by her side, and then fastening a big canvas apron decently about her, so that her clean cotton gown might not suffer, she sat down to work. It takes a good while to make a potato-sack. I don't know how long exactly; but by the time Mrs. Burke had finished the one she had taken in hand, the candle had burned down full two inches. Mrs. Burke, during the last half-hour at least, had grown more and more fidgety. From time to time she got up from her work, and looked out at the window, and listened at the door, grumbling and muttering under her breath. Growing sleepy, I disregarded the pains she had been at to arrange my hair, and scratched it into uproar with both my hands. She rapped out at me in the spitefullest manner for this, and called me a name which, thanks to my mother's diligence and solicitude, I did not deserve. She had one corner of the sack pinned to the table with a sort of bradawl. "Come here, you (something) little pig," said she: "you may as well hould the candle, as sit shnorin' and rootin' there." So I went and held the candle until the sack was finished; by which time the fire had burnt hollow, and, falling in, made a terrible litter over the white hearth. The toast was scorched dry; and a little gas coal, lurking in a chink at the back of the hob, suddenly spouted out a flame at the china butter-boat, and sputtered against it until you could scarcely tell the red from the blue for soot. "Devil take the whole bilin'!" exclaimed Mrs. Burke, glaring round fiercely when she saw all this, and at the same time snatching up the butter-boat at the risk of burning her fingers. "Here am I, and there is he; and prisintly he'll be rollin' in as drunk as Davy's sow! It's cashtin' pearls before shwine, intirely;" and for a moment she scowled about her, and at me in particular, as though I had deliberately, and out of malice, set the gas-coal at her butter-boat. But in the same breath as it were, she recovered, and turning her wrath to music, began humming the fag end of a tune. "Never mind, Jimmy," said she; "there's kind and cheerful yojce, and as though my father had knocked. My father came in. He took three or four steps into the room, and then he stood still, staring about him in amazement. That he had been drinking rather heavily was evident from the circumstance of his wearing the peak of his cap over his ear, instead of the front of his head. In one hand he carried a large plaice, and in the other a bundle of firewood. "You've come home earlier than was expicted, Mr. Ballisat, and caught me at work, sir," said Mrs. Burke, apologetically. "You'll pardon the liberty of me sittin' in your room; I'll run away in a minit." So saying, she got up from her chair and began to bustle about, lifting back to the wall the chair on which the four made sacks were lying, as well as that which she had been sitting on at her work, and there she stood, looking so bright and kind, with the half-made sack on her arm, and her hand resting on the other four. It was plain to see that my poor father was completely overcome. Balanced, as it were, between the fish and the firewood, he stood in the middle of the room, gazing in serious astonishment, first at the butter-boat on the hob; then at the baby, tucked up so clean and comfortable in bed. Then, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me, and at the toast and the tea-things, wagging his head in the most solemn manner; and presently he sank into a chair and buried his eyes in the cuffs of his jacket, the wood rolling away unheeded, and the plaice sliding from his grasp down on to the sanded floor. "Shure you're not well, James Ballisat," said Mrs. Burke, solicitously. "The throubles of this day have been too much for you, poor man!" "No, no; it isn't not that so much. It'sit's " "Askin' your pardon; but that's what it is, and nothin' else," said Mrs. Burke. "But don't mind me, poor fellow; it's been my own exshperience, and I know exactly the state of your feelin's, Jim." "No; it isn't that so much," persisted my father; "it's the pictur-the pictur that come afore me when I come in. I reckons it up comin' along, and what do I make on it? 'It's all over now,' thinks I; 'no more comfortable firesides, | gar, and stirred it. "I think you'll find that to and kettles a-bilin' ready waitin' for you. The your likin',-just thry it." wittles you want, you must cook for yourself; and if you want a plaice, it's no use you a-buyin' of it unless you takes some wood; likewise a bit of drippin' to fry it in.' Look here, ma'am !" So saying, my father took from his jacket some dripping in a piece of paper, and, with a sob, laid it gently on the table. But, shure, Jim Ballisat, if I may go the length of sayin' as much, and knowin', as I well know, how little throuble you give, and how little you expect, shure it might have crossed your mind that there was a craythur at home as lone and unfortunit as yourself, who wouldn't see two motherless babies ". "I thinks all this," continued my father, pursuing the thread of his lamentation; "and home I comes, and what do I find? Why, I finds everything as though nothin' had happened--as though more than nothin' had happened, I might say." And then he took to weeping more violently than before. My father looked grateful, and, with a sigh, stooped forward and helped himself to toast. "Whisha!" exclaimed Mrs. Burke, in a tone of alarm, as she made a snatch at the slice; "is it for the likes of me to see you atein' the top piece of all, that's been fryin' before the fire this hour and more? Lave that for my atein', if you plase, and let me help ye to a bit that's soft and butthery." "We shall be spiled, Jimmy, if we're treated like this," observed my father, turning to me as he took the proffered slice. "You're welcome to your joke, Jim," said Mrs. Burke, with a pleasant little laugh: "but, as you of coorse know, being so long a married man, that it is just these shmall thrifles that make home happy." "I wasn't a-joking, don't you think it," replied my father, biting the slice of toast to the backbone, and slowly masticating it as he gazed contemplatively on the fire. "It ain't a joking matter; more t'other; as much more t'other, "Shure and shure," observed Mrs. Burke, turn-Kitty-'scuse the word, Mrs. B., but seein' you ing away her head and raising her apron, "it was the very last of my thoughts to make you take on so, Mr. Ballisat; indade and indade it was." “No, Kitty, no,” sobbed my father; "I don't think for a minnit that you thought to hurt my feelin's; you've got too good a heart for that. I always thought your heart was in the right place: now I'm sure of it." "No, thanky, ma'am," returned my father, now slightly recovered, but still deeply despondent; "my 'art's too full, I couldn't tackle it." "Not a piece of the back part dipped in butther and browned to a turn?" said Mrs. Burke, persuasively. "I couldn't, really. Your kindness to me, an unfortnit fellow who didn't oughter expect it, has took away all my wantin' for the plaice. Don't say no more to me, please, or I shan't be able to eat any toast either." 66 'Well, if there's anything you want, you've only to give a call," said Mrs. Burke, moving off towards her own room. "Do you want to go particlar, missus? "I only go to oblige you, Mr. Ballisat." "Then just sit down and take a cup with us, that's a good soul. It will be another favour what I shall owe you for, if you will be so good." With an expressive shake of the head, as though she fully understood the state of my father's feelings, and respected him for them, Mrs. Burke yielded to his persuasion, and drew a chair up to the tea-table. Father also drew up a chair. "Do you like your tea sweet, Jim? Will this be too much?" "Don't you trouble about me, missus; you look arter yourself," replied my father, politely. "Tut! throuble indade!" said Mrs. Burke, as she put in the spoonful of sugar, and then tasted the tea in the spoon, and put in a little more su sittin' so familiar-like on that side, and me on "Put your shtool furder in the corner, Jimmy, and then daddy 'll get a bit more of the fire," said Mrs. Burke. "I'm all right, thanky," returned my father. "Now don't you move; fact is, I'd rather the fire didn't ketch my feet. These new 'jacks' do draw 'em so you wouldn't believe, and the fire 'll make 'em wus. I shall be precious glad to get 'em off.” "Then why not get out of 'em at once? Don't you know your juty to yer father, Jimmy? Unlace his boots this moment, and get him his shlippers." "Get out with you," returned my father, with a laugh. "What's the use of your a-talkin' to me about slippers? Anybody to hear you would think you didn't know me, and mistook me for a gentl'man." "Got no slippers, Jim!" Mrs. Burke couldn't have looked more amazed had my father suddenly disclosed to her as a fact that he had no feet, and that what she had been accustomed to regard as such were in reality but two wooden stumps. "Never had a pair in all my life," replied my father. "What does a rough and tumble chap like I am warnt with slippers?" "What should he want wid 'm? Shure you shurprise me by axin' the question, James," said the shocked Mrs. Burke. "As to the roughin' and the tumblin', it may be thrue while you are about gettin' your honest livin', but at home it's different intirely. You know nothin' about a wife's affections, Jim, if you don't think that she regards him as a gintleman as soon as he sits by his fireside, and she thrates him as sich if she's the wife she shud be. Unlace your daddy's boots as I bad ye, Jimmy; and if he'll let us we'll have his poor feet in comfort in a jiffy." It was not the first time I had unlaced my father's boots, and while I busied myself about them, Mrs. Burke slipped into her room, and |