again as
soon as I can," and off he went once more.

Mary and I, having eaten the provisions he brought in, worked away
diligently, thankful to have some employment to occupy our attention.
But she stopped every now and then, when her eyes were too full of tears
to allow her to see her needle, and sobbed as if her dear heart would
break. Then on she went again, sewing as fast as she could, anxious to
please old Tom by showing him how much she had done. At length Nancy
arrived with a big bundle on her back. "I've brought away all I could,"
she said, as she deposited her load on the floor. "I'd a hard job to
get them, and shouldn't at all, if Tom Swatridge and two other men
hadn't come in and said they'd be answerable if everything wasn't all
square. He and they were ordering all about the funeral, and I've got
two women to stay with the missus till she's put all comfortable into
her coffin. Alack! Alack! That I should have to talk about her
coffin!" Nancy's feelings overcame her. On recovering, she, without
loss of time, began to busy herself with household duties--lighted the
fire, put the kettle on to boil, and made up old Tom's bed with some
fresh sheets which she had brought. "You and I are to sleep here,
Mary," she said, "and Peter is to have a shakedown in the sitting-room."

"And where is Tom going to put up himself?" I asked.

"That's what he didn't say but I fancy he's going to stay at night with
an old chum who has a room near here. He said his place isn't big
enough for us all, and so he'd made up his mind to turn out."

Such I found to be the case. Nothing would persuade our friend to sleep
in his own house, for fear of crowding us. He and several other
watermen, old shipmates, and friends of father's, had agreed to defray
the expenses of mother's funeral, for otherwise she would have been
carried to a pauper's grave. Her furniture and all the property she had
possessed were not sufficient to pay her debts contracted during her
illness, in spite of all her exertions. We, too, had not Tom taken
charge of us, should have been sent to the workhouse, and Nancy would
have been turned out into the world to seek her fortune, for her mother
was dead, and she had no other relatives. She did talk of trying to get
into service, which meant becoming a drudge in a small tradesman's
family, that she might help us with her wages; but she could not bring
herself to leave Mary; and Tom, indeed, said she