Trotty held his peace.

"And how hard, father, to grow old and die, and think we might have
cheered and helped each other! How hard in all our lives to love each
other, and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing,
growing old and gray. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him
(which I never could), oh, father, dear, how hard to have a heart so
full as mine is now, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop,
without remembering one happy moment of a woman's life to stay behind
and comfort me and make me better!"

Trotty sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily--that is
to say, with here a laugh and there a sob, and here a laugh and sob
together:

"So Richard says, father, as his work was yesterday made certain for
some time to come, and as I love him and have loved him full three
years--ah, longer than that, if he knew it!--will I marry him on New
Year's Day?"

Just then Richard himself came up to persuade Toby to agree to their
plan; and, almost at the same moment, a footman came out of the house
and ordered them all off the steps, and some gentlemen came out who
called up Trotty, and asked a great many questions, and found a good
deal of fault, telling Richard he was very foolish to want to get
married, which made Toby feel very unhappy, and Richard very angry. So
the lovers went off together sadly; Richard looking gloomy and downcast,
and Meg in tears. Toby, who had a letter given him to carry, and a
sixpence, trotted off in rather low spirits to a very grand house, where
he was told to take the letter in to the gentleman. While he was
waiting, he heard the letter read. It was from Alderman Cute, to tell
Sir Joseph Bowley that one of his tenants named Will Fern, who had come
to London to try to get work, and been brought before him charged with
sleeping in a shed, and asking if Sir Joseph wished him to be dealt
kindly with or otherwise. To Toby's great disappointment, for Sir Joseph
had talked a great deal about being a friend to the poor, the answer was
given that Will Fern might be sent to prison as a vagabond, and made an
example of, though his only fault was that he was poor. On his way home,
Toby, thinking sadly, with his hat pulled down low on his head, ran
against a man dressed like a country-man, carrying a fair-haired little
girl. Toby enquired anxiously if he had hurt either of them. The man
answered no, and seeing Toby had a kind face, he asked him the way to