jellies, and pies, and such
like."

"Oh," said Becky, with a patient sigh. "Well, we shan't have no money
at all now, so we can't get any of 'em."

"I shall get six shillings a week when I begin work," said Dan; "and
there's what mother gets charing. But then there's the rent, you see,
and father getting nothing--"

He broke off, for the door opened, and Tuvvy himself appeared with his
basket of tools on his shoulder. The children looked at him silently as
he flung himself into a chair, but his wife began immediately in a tone
of mild reproachfulness.

"Yer supper's been waiting this ever so long, and it wasn't much to
boast of to begin with, but there--I s'pose we may be thankful to get a
bit of dry bread now."

She poured the contents of the saucepan into a dish, sighing and
lamenting over it as she did so.

"'Tain't what I've been used to, as was always brought up respectable,
and have done my duty to the children. And there's the doctor's bill--I
s'pose he won't come to see Becky no more till that's paid--and there
she is on her back a cripple, as you may call it, for life p'r'aps. And
what is it you mean to turn to, now you've lost a good place?"

As long as there was a mouthful of his supper left, Tuvvy preserved a
strict silence; but when his plate was empty, he pushed it away, and
said grimly, "Gaffer's goin' to let me stop on."

"Stop on!" repeated Mrs Tuvvy. She stopped short in her progress across
the kitchen, and let the empty plate she was carrying fall helplessly at
her side. "Stop on!" she repeated.

"Ain't I said so?" answered Tuvvy, pressing down the tobacco in his pipe
with his thumb.

Mrs Tuvvy seemed incapable of further speech, and stood gazing at her
husband with her mouth partly open. It was Becky who exclaimed, with a
faint colour of excitement in her cheek, "Oh father, what made him?"

"Do tell us, father," added Dan, touching him gently on the arm.

Tuvvy looked round at the boy's earnest face, and then down at the
table, and began to draw figures on it with the stem of his pipe. Mrs
Tuvvy hovered a little nearer, and Becky sat upright on her couch, with
eagerness in her eyes as her father began to speak.

"It was along of a little gentleman, Dennis Chester his name is, who
used to come and see me work. He asked the gaffer, and gaffer said
`No.' So then he says, `Will you let him stop,' says he, `if the others
are agreeable?' and to that the gaffer says neither yes no