the sharpness of her little face, divested of all its
counterbalancing roundness--a keen, worn little face since the day it
had smiled so confusedly but generously out of the scurvy silk in the
church at Redwater--was a sweet-looking woman under her care-laden air.
Some women retain sweetness under nought but skin and bone; they will
not pinch into meanness and spite; they have still faith and charity.
One would not wonder though Dulcie afforded more vivid glimpses of _il
Beato's_ angels after the contour of her face was completely spoilt.

You can fancy the family room in St. Martin's Lane, some five or six
years after Will Locke and Dulcie were wed, with its strange litter of
acids and aquafortis, graving tools and steel plates. Will and Dulcie
might have been some of the abounding false coiners, had it not been for
the colours, the canvas, and the vessels from the potteries, all huddled
together without attention to effect. Yet these were not without order,
for they were too busy people to be able to afford to be purely
disorderly. They could not have had the curtain less scant, for the
daylight was precious to them; they had not space for more furniture
than might have sufficed a poor tradesman or better sort of mechanic;
only there were traces of gentle birth and breeding in the casts, the
prints and portfolios, the Dutch clock, and the great hulk of a
state-bed hung with the perpetual dusky yellow damask, which served as a
nursery for the poor listless little children.

Presently Dulcie looked after the sops, and surreptitiously awarded Will
the Benjamite's portion, and Will ate it absently with the only appetite
there; though he, too, was a consumptive-looking man--a good deal more
so than when he attracted the pity of the good wife at the "Nine Miles
Inn." Then Dulcie crooned to the children of the milk-porridge she would
give them next night, and sang to them as she lulled them to sleep, her
old breezy, bountiful English songs, "Young Roger came tapping at
Dolly's window," and "I met my lad at the garden gate," and brushed
their faces into laughter with the primroses and hyacinths she had
bought for Will in Covent Garden Market. Will asked to see them in the
spring twilight, and described the banks where they grew, with some
revival of his early lore, and added a tale of the fairies who made them
their round tables and galleries, which caused the eldest child (the
only one who walked with Dulcie in his little