st, but he preferred Monday. It was a delight to
him to hear again the carts and the noise of feet, and to feel that the
world was alive once more. Sunday with its enforced quietude and
inactivity was a burden to him.

"Well, Miss Catharine, how are you to-day?"

"How did you know I was Miss Catharine? I hadn't spoken."

"Lord, Miss, I could tell. Though it's only about two years since I lost
my eyes, I could tell. I can make out people's footsteps. What a lovely
morning! What's going on now down below?"

Mike always took much interest in the wharves by the side of the river.

"Why, Barnes's big lighter is loading malt."

"Ah! what, the new one with the yellow band round it! that's a beautiful
lighter, that is."

Mike had never seen it.

"What days do you dislike the most? Foggy, damp, dull, dark days?"

These foggy, damp, dull, dark days were particularly distasteful to
Catharine.

"No, Miss, I can't say I do, for, you know, I don't see them."

"Cold, bitter days?"

"They are a bit bad; but somehow I earn more money on cold days than on
any other; how it is I don't know."

"I hate the dust."

"Ah now! that _is_ unpleasant, but there again, Miss, I dodge it, and
it's my belief that it wouldn't worry people half so much if they
wouldn't look at it."

"How much have you earned this morning?"

"Not a penny yet, Miss, but it will come."

"I want two pairs of shoe-laces," and Miss Catharine, selecting two
pairs, put down a fourpenny-piece, part of her pocket-money, twice the
market value of the laces, and tripped over the bridge. When she was at
dinner with her father and mother that day she suddenly said--

"Father, didn't Mike Catchpole lose his sight in our foundry?"

"Yes."

"Have you been talking with him again?" interposed Mrs. Furze. "I wish
you would not stop on the bridge as you do. It does not look nice for a
girl like you to stay and gossip with Mike."

Catharine took no notice.

"Did you ever do anything for him?"

"What an odd question!" again interposed Mrs. Furze. "What should we do?
There was his club besides, we sent him the lotion."

"Why cannot you take Tom as an apprentice?"

"Because," said her father, "there is nobody to pay the premium; you know
what that means. When a boy is bound apprentice the master has a sum of
money for teaching him the business."

Catharine did not quite comprehend, inasmuch as there were two boys in
the back shop who were paid wage