slow pace,
but with a footfall made ready for her ear, and never had he, when his
heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so
cheerful and courageous.

"There we are," said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the
better judgment of his work; "as near the real thing as sixpen'orth of
halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that the whole front of the house
opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it now, and regular
doors to the rooms to go in at! but that's the worst of my calling. I'm
always fooling myself, and cheating myself."

"You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, father?"

"Tired," echoed Caleb, with a great burst in his manner, "what should
tire me, Bertha? _I_ was never tired. What does it mean?"

To give the greater force to his words, he stopped himself in an
imitation of two small stretching and yawning figures on the
mantel-shelf, who were shown as in one eternal state of weariness from
the waist upwards; and hummed a bit of a song. It was a drinking song,
something about a sparkling bowl; and he sang it with an air of a
devil-may-care voice, that made his face a thousand times more meager
and more thoughtful than ever.

"What! you're singing, are you?" said Tackleton, the toy-seller for whom
he worked, putting his head in at the door. "Go it! _I_ can't sing."

Nobody would have thought that Tackleton _could_ sing. He hadn't what is
generally termed a singing face, by any means.

"I can't afford to sing," said Tackleton. "I'm glad you can. I hope you
can afford to work, too. Hardly time for both, I should think?"

"If you could only see him, Bertha, how he's winking at me!" whispered
Caleb. "Such a man to joke! you'd think, if you didn't know him, he was
in earnest, wouldn't you, now?"

The blind girl smiled and nodded.

"I am thanking you for the little tree, the beautiful little tree,"
replied Bertha, bringing forward a tiny rose-tree in blossom, which, by
an innocent story, Caleb had made her believe was her master's gift,
though he himself had gone without a meal or two to buy it.

"The bird that can sing and won't sing must be made to sing, they say,"
grumbled Tackleton. "What about the owl that can't sing, and oughtn't to
sing, and will sing; is there anything that he should be made to do?"

"The extent to which he's winking at this moment!" whispered Caleb to
his daughter. "Oh, my gracious!"

"Always merry and light-hearted with us!"