ings, and grain in every kind of wood you can
mention--oak, maple, walnut, satinwood, cherry-tree--'

'You can both do too much to stand the least chance of being allowed to
do anything in a city, where limitation is all the rule in labour. To
have any success, Sol, you must be a man who can thoroughly look at a
door to see what ought to be done to it, but as to looking at a window,
that's not your line; or a person who, to the remotest particular,
understands turning a screw, but who does not profess any knowledge of
how to drive a nail. Dan must know how to paint blue to a marvel, but
must be quite in the dark about painting green. If you stick to some
such principle of specialty as this, you may get employment in London.'

'Ha-ha-ha!' said Dan, striking at a stone in the road with the stout
green hazel he carried. 'A wink is as good as a nod: thank'ee--we'll
mind all that now.'

'If we do come,' said Sol, 'we shall not mix up with Mrs. Petherwin at
all.'

'O indeed!'

'O no. (Perhaps you think it odd that we call her "Mrs. Petherwin," but
that's by agreement as safer and better than Berta, because we be such
rough chaps you see, and she's so lofty.) 'Twould demean her to claim
kin wi' her in London--two journeymen like we, that know nothing besides
our trades.'

'Not at all,' said Christopher, by way of chiming in in the friendliest
manner. 'She would be pleased to see any straightforward honest man and
brother, I should think, notwithstanding that she has moved in other
society for a time.'

'Ah, you don't know Berta!' said Dan, looking as if he did.

'How--in what way do you mean?' said Christopher uneasily.

'So lofty--so very lofty! Isn't she, Sol? Why she'll never stir out
from mother's till after dark, and then her day begins; and she'll
traipse about under the trees, and never go into the high-road, so that
nobody in the way of gentle-people shall run up against her and know her
living in such a little small hut after biding in a big mansion-place.
There, we don't find fault wi' her about it: we like her just the same,
though she don't speak to us in the street; for a feller must be a fool
to make a piece of work about a woman's pride, when 'tis his own sister,
and hang upon her and bother her when he knows 'tis for her good that he
should not. Yes, her life has been quare enough. I hope she enjoys it,
but for my part I like plain sailing. None of your ups and downs for me.
There, I supp