f bread and cheese,
leastways, unless any kind soul gives me a old bone or some broken
wittles!'

"'Well, you can have a cosy broil to-day,' laughed the butcher; ''tis
prime meat, and that I'll answer for!'

"Poor old Joe trotted off in high glee with his prize, buying a
"happorth" of onions and a "pennorth of all sorts" to flavour his stew
with. For old Joe, being a handy and sensible sort of fellow, had in
course of time become quite a cook, with the poor scraps his scanty
means furnished. Nor was he the only one to benefit by it, for many a
tea-cupful of what was proudly called "broth" did Joe spare to one or
two starving mothers hard by, for their ailing little ones. But old Joe
had a visitor to-day, his long lost wife's blind sister, and so he was
proud indeed to make a feast in her honour; and while his little scrap
of meat was slowly simmering, with the odds and ends of garden-stuff he
had bought, Joe made his visitor as comfortable as he could, and gave
her his kitchens to "feel," as she could not see.

"'I'm getting quite a hand at making 'em, Liza,' said the old man,
cheerily; 'I've got quite a sight of little customers, and I think I
shall get on by degrees, you know, werry slow, to make some better-most
kinds, and sell the bigger ones at fourpence a-piece! And then I can
throw in a kitchen table into the bargain, you know, which will make 'em
more completer.'

"Poor blind Liza admired to his heart's content, and felt us all over
with her wonderfully sensitive fingers, which almost seemed to find out
what sort of paper we were covered with, and she was not without her bit
of proud satisfaction, too, for she had brought Joe a pretty little
square basket, with a lid to it, which had been the work of her own
poor, unguided fingers. She had been placed by a very charitable lady in
a blind school, where she had learned basket-work, and she now was able
to help her old mother by her work, which was disposed of for her at a
shop established for that especial purpose in the Euston Road.

"Joe was mightily delighted with his basket, and said it was what he had
been wanting all along to keep his coppers in on his tray of toys. And
so, after a merry evening, Joe limped off to see the poor blind woman
safe to her home, about three miles distant. This was old Joe's solitary
holiday for many a month, for he had no friends and few acquaintances,
except the poor women who came thankfully to him now and then for one of