ever
coarse; but to earn bare bread; to scrape together just enough to toil
upon, and want upon, and keep alive in us the consciousness of our hard
fate! Oh, Meg, Meg!" she raised her voice and twined her arms about her
as she spoke, like one in pain. "How can the cruel world go round, and
bear to look upon such lives!"

"Lilly!" said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet
face. "Why, Lilly! You! So pretty and so young!"

"Oh, Meg!" she interrupted, holding her at arm's-length, and looking in
her face imploringly. "The worst of all! The worst of all! Strike me
old, Meg! Wither me and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful
thoughts that tempt me in my youth!"

Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But, the Spirit of the child had
taken flight. Was gone.

* * * * *

FOURTH QUARTER.

Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; some faint
impression of the ringing of the Chimes; some giddy consciousness of
having seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the
recollection of them lost itself in the confusion of their numbers; some
hurried knowledge, how conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had
passed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the child attending him, stood
looking on at mortal company.

Fat company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable company. They were but
two, but they were red enough for ten. They sat before a bright fire,
with a small low table between them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea
and muffins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the table
had seen service very lately. But all the cups and saucers being clean,
and in their proper places in the corner cupboard; and the brass
toasting fork hanging in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle
fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a glove; there remained
no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred
and washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and
glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her patrons.

This cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the
fire between them, and sat looking at the glowing sparks that dropped
into the grate; now nodding off into a doze; now waking up again when
some hot fragment, larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the
fire were coming with it.

It was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not
o