, mim, widout wather?" coolly
returned Biddy.

"Clean!"

"Yes, mim, clane."

"There was no crying necessity to have it clean to-day. Didn't you
see--"

"It's Sathurday, mim," interrupted Biddy, in a voice that showed the
argument in her mind to be unanswerable. "We always wash the
pavement on Sathurday."

"But it doesn't do to wash the pavement," I returned, now trying to
put a little reason into her head, "when it is so cold that water
will freeze as soon as it touches the ground. The bricks become as
slippery as glass, and people can't walk on them without falling."

"Och! And what hev we till do wid the paple. Lot 'em look 'till
their steps."

"But, Biddy, that won't do. People don't expect to find pavements
like glass; and they slip, often, while unaware of danger. Just at
this moment a poor lad fell, and broke his jug all to pieces."

"Did he! And less the pity for him. Why did'nt he walk along like an
orderly, dacent body? Why didn't he look 'till his steps?"

"Biddy," said I, seeing that it was useless to hold an argument with
her,--"Do you go this minute and throw ashes all over the pavement."

"Ashes on the clane pavement! Mrs. Smith!"

"Yes, Biddy; and do it at once. There! Somebody else has fallen."

I sprung to the window in time to see a woman on the pavement, and
the contents of her basket of marketing scattered all around her.

"Go this minute and throw ashes over the pavement!" I called to
Biddy in a voice of command.

The girl left the room with evident reluctance. The idea of
scattering ashes over her clean pavement, was, to her, no very
pleasant one.

It seemed to me, as I sat looking down from my windows upon the
slippery flags, and noted the difficulty which pedestrians had to
cross them safely, that Biddy would never appear with her pan of
ashes.

"Why don't the girl do as I directed?" had just passed, in an
impatient tone, from my lips, when two well dressed men came in
view, one at each extremity of the sheet of ice. They were
approaching, and stepped with evident unconsciousness of danger,
upon the treacherous surface. I had a kind of presentiment that one
or both would fall, and my instinct was not at fault. Suddenly the
heels of one flew up, and he struck the pavement with a concussion
that sprung his hat from his head, and sent it some feet in the air.
In his efforts to recover himself, his legs became entangled in
those of the other, and over he went, backwards, his he