the solids of their breakfast up and down the stone-flagged
court outside, coming in occasionally to gulp draughts of very weak tea
from a gallipot or two which stood on the table, and to wheedle Mr.
Tidger out of any small piece of bloater which he felt generous enough
to bestow.

"Peg away, Ann," said Mr. Tidger, heartily.

His wife's elder sister shook her head, and passing the remains of her
slice to one of her small nephews, leaned back in her chair. "No
appetite, Tidger," she said, slowly.

"You should go in for carpentering," said Mr. Tidger, in justification of
the huge crust he was carving into mouthfuls with his pocket-knife.
"Seems to me I can't eat enough sometimes. Hullo, who's the letter for?"

He took it from the postman, who stood at the door amid a bevy of Tidgers
who had followed him up the court, and slowly read the address.

"'Mrs. Ann Pullen,'" he said, handing it over to his sister-in-law; "nice
writing, too."

Mrs. Pullen broke the envelope, and after a somewhat lengthy search for
her pocket, fumbled therein for her spectacles. She then searched the
mantelpiece, the chest of drawers, and the dresser, and finally ran them
to earth on the copper.

She was not a good scholar, and it took her some time to read the letter,
a proceeding which she punctuated with such "Ohs" and "Ahs" and gaspings
and "God bless my souls" as nearly drove the carpenter and his wife, who
were leaning forward impatiently, to the verge of desperation.

"Who's it from?" asked Mr. Tidger for the third time.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Pullen. "Good gracious, who ever would ha'
thought it!"

"Thought what, Ann?" demanded the carpenter, feverishly.

"Why don't people write their names plain?" demanded his sister-in-law,
impatiently. "It's got a printed name up in the corner; perhaps that's
it. Well, I never did--I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or
my heels."

"You're sitting down, that's what you're a-doing," said the carpenter,
regarding her somewhat unfavourably.

"Perhaps it's a take-in," said Mrs. Pullen, her lips trembling. "I've
heard o' such things. If it is, I shall never get over it--never."

"Get--over--what?" asked the carpenter.

"It don't look like a take-in," soliloquized Mrs. Pullen, "and I
shouldn't think anybody'd go to all that trouble and spend a penny to
take in a poor thing like me."

Mr. Tidger, throwing politeness to the winds, leaped forward, and
snatching the let