hildren yell after her, "Old Goody Witch!" she
swings about and takes her stick to them, pouring out such a flow of
imprecation upon their young heads that they run away in a panic of
alarm. Moreover, I have it on reliable authority that when Miss Stipps
steps over the way with her jug for a pint of porter, she is in the
habit, after reaching up her arm to receive the jug back from the
barman, of telling the young man pretty sharply that she isn't buying
froth, and that she'll trouble him to do a blow at the jug and to give
another pull to his tap, which won't hurt him, it won't, as he ain't yet
the proprietor of the place, and not likely to be, neither, if he treats
poor ladies in sich a wulgar and Sheeny fashion.

I beg Miss Stipp to desist from her labour of dabbing the grate with
streaky spots of black-lead, and implore her to take a seat and indulge
herself for an easy hour in anecdotal reminiscences. Miss Stipp yields
to my blandishments--that is to say, she backs against a little
cobbler's stool, a stool which the Baby Bear in that immortal legend of
"The Three Bears" would have found several sizes too small for it, and
appears to slope half an inch to the rear. By the action of crossing her
hands in her lap, and by the society smile on her face as she turns her
dewy nose in my direction, I gather, though I should never have
discovered it for myself, that Miss Stipp is seated.

We are now in for a thoroughly comfortable and intimate conversation.
The cat is fast asleep. The spinster's mantelpiece, which is decorated
with pictorial advertisements of such highly inappropriate commodities
as baby's food and tobacco, wears an aspect which I am content to regard
as social. And the cupboard beside the fireplace, although the bottom
floor is used as a coal-cellar, suggests, with its crowded shelves of
dishes, egg-cups, plates, biscuit-boxes, and paper bags, that we are in
for a little friendly banquet, which, if not good enough for his Grace
of Canterbury, might yet have inspired him of Assisi to ask a blessing.

* * * * *

"Well, you must know," says Miss Stipp, looking at the fire, and nodding
her head as she speaks, "that I am one of ten, that I was born in
Blackfriars--born in Blackfriars, I was--and that all the boys died, and
that only me, who was born a cripple--born a cripple, I was--and my two
sisters ever grew up to be a comfort to my poor mother. What father was,
if ever he w