where you were, or send us word!' said the girl.

'Ah Dolly, Dolly!' returned the locksmith, shaking his head, and
smiling, 'how cruel of you to run upstairs to bed! Come down to
breakfast, madcap, and come down lightly, or you'll wake your mother.
She must be tired, I am sure--I am.'

Keeping these latter words to himself, and returning his daughter's nod,
he was passing into the workshop, with the smile she had awakened still
beaming on his face, when he just caught sight of his 'prentice's brown
paper cap ducking down to avoid observation, and shrinking from the
window back to its former place, which the wearer no sooner reached than
he began to hammer lustily.

'Listening again, Simon!' said Gabriel to himself. 'That's bad. What in
the name of wonder does he expect the girl to say, that I always catch
him listening when SHE speaks, and never at any other time! A bad habit,
Sim, a sneaking, underhanded way. Ah! you may hammer, but you won't beat
that out of me, if you work at it till your time's up!'

So saying, and shaking his head gravely, he re-entered the workshop, and
confronted the subject of these remarks.

'There's enough of that just now,' said the locksmith. 'You needn't make
any more of that confounded clatter. Breakfast's ready.'

'Sir,' said Sim, looking up with amazing politeness, and a peculiar
little bow cut short off at the neck, 'I shall attend you immediately.'

'I suppose,' muttered Gabriel, 'that's out of the 'Prentice's Garland or
the 'Prentice's Delight, or the 'Prentice's Warbler, or the Prentice's
Guide to the Gallows, or some such improving textbook. Now he's going to
beautify himself--here's a precious locksmith!'

Quite unconscious that his master was looking on from the dark corner by
the parlour door, Sim threw off the paper cap, sprang from his seat,
and in two extraordinary steps, something between skating and minuet
dancing, bounded to a washing place at the other end of the shop,
and there removed from his face and hands all traces of his previous
work--practising the same step all the time with the utmost gravity.
This done, he drew from some concealed place a little scrap of
looking-glass, and with its assistance arranged his hair, and
ascertained the exact state of a little carbuncle on his nose. Having
now completed his toilet, he placed the fragment of mirror on a low
bench, and looked over his shoulder at so much of his legs as could be
reflected in that small compass,