gifts he made me;
enough to fill a yellow tin box."

"Generous he was," Simon said. "Hap he parted with all. Full of feeling
you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day
in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without
a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young
ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if
you are sacked."

"You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out.
She removed her large hat and set upright the osprey feathers thereon,
puffed out her hair which was fashioned in a high pile, and whitened
with powder the birth-stain on her cheek. "They daren't discharge me.
I'd carry the costume trade with me. Each second you hear, 'Miss
Witton-Griffiths, forward,' and 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, her heinness is
waiting for you.' In favor am I with the buyer."

"Whisper to me your average takings per week," Simon craved. "Not repeat
will I."

After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then."

Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick--the
candle in which died before Jacob--and a teapot, and she sat in the
chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown."

"Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious.
Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead."

Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak
of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't
drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he
promised."

"Great is your avarice," Simon declared.

"Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he
presented me with dresses--until he was sacked. While I was cribbing,
did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day."

"I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So
grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a
funeral sermon on my brother Shacob."

Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his
younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting
his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly.
Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he
gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the
capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed c