went
up-stairs; while after waiting till he heard a door close, Bob went
cautiously into the surgery, crept to the door of the consulting-room,
and listened to find out whether the doctor was there, and finding him
absent, the boy went nimbly to the nest of drawers, opened one, and took
out a pair of scissors before lifting a tin case from a corner--a case
which looked like the holder of a map.

Bob removed the lid, drew out a roll of diachylon, and after cutting off
a strip, he replaced the lid and scissors, and descended to the kitchen,
where Elizabeth was peeling potatoes, and making the droning noise which
she evidently believed to be a song.

"Look ye here!" cried the boy, triumphantly showing his bleeding
knuckles.

Elizabeth uttered a faint cry.

"Why, you've been fighting!" she cried. "Oh, you bad wicked boy!"

"So are you," cried Bob tauntingly: "you'd fight if the chaps served you
as they did me, and said what they did about the doctor."

"What did they say?" said the girl, giving her nose a rub as if to make
it more plastic.

"You bathe them cuts nistely and put some sticking-plaister on, and I'll
tell you."

Elizabeth set down the potato basin, wiped her hands, and after filling
a tin bowl full of cold water, and fetching a towel, she tenderly bathed
the boy's dirty injured hands.

"Now tell me what they said about the doctor," she said coaxingly.

"Why, they gets saying things to try and get me took away. My old woman
don't like me stopping."

"She's a dreadful old creature," said Elizabeth angrily, "and I won't
have her here."

"So's your old woman a dreadful old creature," retorted Bob, "and I
won't have her here."

"My mother's been dead ten years," said Elizabeth, battling with an
obstinate bit of mud, "and I won't have you speak to me in that impudent
way."

"Then you leave my poor old woman alone."

"You let her stop away instead of always coming down them area-steps,
and you encouraging her."

"That I don't, so come now. She's my old woman and I'm very fond on
her, but I wish she wouldn't come. She allus comes when I'm busy."

"And she ought to be very glad you are here."

"But she ain't. She says doctors are bad 'uns. And that they do all
sorts o' things as they oughtn't to. She was in the orspittle once, and
she said it was horrid, and if she hadn't made haste and got well they'd
have 'sected her."

"Lor!" said Elizabeth, drying the boy's hands with a series of gen