ear ago next fourteenth
o' December, Mr. Ackroyd. There's a deal happened since then. On that
day I had my shop in the Cut, and I had two legs like other mortals.
Things wasn't doing so bad with me. Why, it's like yesterday to
remember. My wife she come a-runnin' into the shop just before
dinner-time. "There's a boiler busted at Walton's," she says, "an' they
say as Mr. Trent's killed." It was Walton's, the pump-maker's, in
Ground Street.'

'It's Simpson & Thomas's now,' remarked Mrs. Bower. 'Why, where Jim
Candle works, you know, Mr. Hackroyd.'

Luke nodded, knowing the circumstance. The whole story was familiar to
him, indeed; but Mr. Boddy talked on in an old man's way for pleasure
in the past.

'So it is, so it is. Me an' my wife took the little 'uns to the
'Orspital. He knew 'em, did poor Mat, but he couldn't speak. What a
face he had! Thyrza was frighted and cried; Lyddy just held on hard to
my hand, but she didn't cry. I don't remember to a' seen Lyddy cry more
than two or three times in my life; she always hid away for that, when
she couldn't help herself, bless her!'

'Lydia grows more an' more like her father,' said Mrs. Bower.

'She does, ma'am, she does. I used to say as she was like him, when she
sat in my shop of a night and watched the people in and out. Her eyes
was so bright-looking, just like Mat's. Eh, there wasn't much as the
little 'un didn't see. One day--how my wife did laugh!--she looks at me
for a long time, an' then she says: "How is it, Mr. Boddy," she says,
"as you've got one eyelid lower than the other?" It's true as I have a
bit of a droop in the right eye, but it's not so much as any one 'ud
notice it at once. I can hear her say that as if it was in this room.
An' she stood before me, a little thing that high. I didn't think she'd
be so tall. She growed wonderful from twelve to sixteen. It's me has to
look up to her now.'

A customer entered the shop, and Mrs. Bower went out.

'I don't think Thyrza's as much a favourite with any one as her
sister,' said Ackroyd, looking at Mary Bower, who had been silent all
this time.

'Oh, I like her very much,' was the reply. 'But there's something--I
don't think she's as easy to understand as Lydia. Still, I shouldn't
wonder if she pleases some people more.'

Mary dropped her eyes as she spoke, and smiled gently. Ackroyd tapped
with his foot.

'That's Totty Nancarrow,' said Mrs. Bower, reappearing from the shop.
'What a girl that is, to b