y; but I thinks as 'ow--"

"Pish, you fool!" cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. "Vy,
it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my
boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So
there's the poor cretur a raving and a dying, and you--"

"Let I speak!" interrupted Dummie in his turn. "I tells you I vent
first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and
evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Bible; and she says,
says she, 'I' as only a "Companion to the Halter," but you'll get a
Bible, I think, at Master Talkins', the cobbler as preaches.' So I
goes to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the
Bible,--'cause vy? I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a getting
it at the butcher's hover the vay,--'cause vy? The butcher 'll be
damned!' So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as
not a Bible, but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like
'un, and mayhap the poor cretur may n't see the difference.' So I takes
the plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be surely! And how's poor Judy?"

"Fearsome! she'll not be over the night, I'm a thinking."

"Vell, I'll track up the dancers!"

So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance
of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney,
afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which
the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray.
The walls were whitewashed, and at sundry places strange figures and
grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate, in such
sable outline as the end of a smoked stick or the edge of a piece of
charcoal is wont to produce. The wan and flickering light afforded by a
farthing candle gave a sort of grimness and menace to these achievements
of pictorial art, especially as they more than once received
embellishments from portraits of Satan such as he is accustomed to be
drawn. A low fire burned gloomily in the sooty grate, and on the hob
hissed "the still small voice" of an iron kettle. On a round deal table
were two vials, a cracked cup, a broken spoon of some dull metal, and
upon two or three mutilated chairs were scattered various articles
of female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow,
shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked
apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully