half-past nine, so that little Grace had
him washed and dressed, and on his way to chapel in pretty good time,
all things considered.

No one who entered the Wesleyan Chapel of St. Just that morning for the
first time could have imagined that a large proportion of the
well-dressed people who filled the pews were miners and balmaidens.
Some of the latter were elegantly, we might almost say gorgeously,
attired, insomuch that, but for their hands and speech, they might
almost have passed for ladies of fashion. The very latest thing in
bonnets, and the newest mantles, were to be seen on their pretty heads
and shapely shoulders.

As we have said before, and now repeat, this circumstance arose from the
frequency of the visits of the individual styled "Johnny Fortnight,"
whose great aim and end in life is to supply miners, chiefly the females
among them, with the necessaries, and unnecessaries, of wearing apparel.

When the managing director entered Mr Donnithorne's pew and sat down
beside his buxom hostess, he felt, but of course was much too well bred
to express astonishment; for his host had told him that a large number
of the people who attended the chapel were miners, and for a time he
failed to see any of the class whom he had hitherto been accustomed to
associate with rusty-red and torn garbs, and dirty hands and faces. But
he soon observed that many of the stalwart, serious-looking men with
black coats and white linen, had strong, muscular hands, with
hard-looking knuckles, which, in some instances, exhibited old or recent
cuts and bruises.

It was a new sight for the managing director to behold the large and
apparently well-off families filing into the pews, for, to say truth,
Mr Clearemout was not much in the habit of attending church, and he had
never before entered a Methodist chapel. He watched with much curiosity
the gradual filling of the seats, and the grave, quiet demeanour of the
people. Especially interesting was it when Maggot's family came in and
sat down, with the baby Maggot in charge of little Grace. Mr
Clearemout had met Maggot, and had seen his family; but interest gave
place to astonishment when Mrs Penrose walked into the church, backed
by her sixteen children, the eldest males among whom were miners, and
the eldest females tin-dressers, while the little males and females
aspired to be miners and tin-dressers in the course of time.

"That's Penrose's family," whispered Mr Donnithorne to h