cakes spreading themselves slowly over the
dirty floor.

"If that don't make me sick!" said Dinah Brome to herself as she turned
and went on her way.

The cottage of Dinah Brome, distant from that of Depper's wife by a
score or so of yards, was, in its domestic economy, as removed from it
as the North Pole from the South. Small wonder that Depper--his name
was William Kittle, a fact of which the neighbourhood made no practical
use, which he himself only recalled with an effort--preferred to the
dirt, untidiness and squalor of his own abode the spick-and-span
cleanliness of Dinah Brome's. Small wonder that in this atmosphere of
wholesomeness and comfort, he chose to spend the hours of the Sabbath
during which the public-house was closed; and other hours. Small
wonder, looking at the fine, capable figure of the woman, now bustling
about with teapot and cups, he should esteem Mrs Brome personally above
the slatternly skeleton at his own hearth.

Having made a cup of tea and cut a couple of slices of
bread-and-butter, the owner of the fresh-scrubbed bricks, the fresh
polished furniture, the dazzlingly white hearth, turned her back on her
household gods, and, plate and cup in hands, betook herself, by way of
the uneven bricked passage separating the row of houses from their rows
of gardens at the back, to the house of the wife of Depper.

"I swore I wouldn't," she said to herself as she went along; "but I'm
dinged if the sight o' Depper's old woman a-crawlin' arter them
mamucked up bits o' dough ha'n't tarned my stomach!"

She knocked at the door with the toe of her boot, her hands being full,
and receiving no answer, opened it and went in.

Depper's old woman had fallen, a miserable heap of bones and dingy
clothing, upon the broken-down couch, and had fainted there.

"I'd suner 'twas anyone in the warld than you a-waitin' on me like
this," she said, when, consciousness having returned during the
ministrations of the other woman, her weary eyes opened upon the
healthy face above her.

"And the las' time you telled me to walk out o' your house, I swore I'd
never set fut in it again," Mrs Brome made answer. "But I ha' swallered
worse things in my time than my own wards, I make no doubt; and you ha'
come to a pass, Car'line Kittle, when you ha' got to take what you can
git and be thankful."

"Pass? I ha' come to a pass, indeed!" the sick woman moaned. "You're
wholly right there, bor; wholly right."

"So now you ha