ently, to the verge of desperation.

"Who's it from?" asked Mr. Tidger for the third time.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Pullen. "Good gracious, who ever would ha'
thought it!"

"Thought what, Ann?" demanded the carpenter, feverishly.

"Why don't people write their names plain?" demanded his sister-in-law,
impatiently. "It's got a printed name up in the corner; perhaps that's
it. Well, I never did--I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or
my heels."

"You're sitting down, that's what you're a-doing," said the carpenter,
regarding her somewhat unfavourably.

"Perhaps it's a take-in," said Mrs. Pullen, her lips trembling. "I've
heard o' such things. If it is, I shall never get over it--never."

"Get--over--what?" asked the carpenter.

"It don't look like a take-in," soliloquized Mrs. Pullen, "and I
shouldn't think anybody'd go to all that trouble and spend a penny to
take in a poor thing like me."

Mr. Tidger, throwing politeness to the winds, leaped forward, and
snatching the letter from her, read it with feverish haste, tempered
by a defective education.

"It's a take-in, Ann," he said, his voice trembling; "it must be."

"What is?" asked Mrs. Tidger, impatiently.

"Looks like it," said Mrs. Pullen, feebly.

"What is it?" screamed Mrs. Tidger, wrought beyond all endurance.

Her husband turned and regarded her with much severity, but Mrs. Tidger's
gaze was the stronger, and after a vain attempt to meet it, he handed her
the letter.

Mrs. Tidger read it through hastily, and then snatching the baby from her
lap, held it out with both arms to her husband, and jumping up, kissed
her sister heartily, patting her on the back in her excitement until she
coughed with the pain of it.

"You don't think it's a take-in, Polly?" she inquired.

"Take-in?" said her sister; "of course it ain't. Lawyers don't play
jokes; their time's too valuable. No, you're an heiress all right, Ann,
and I wish you joy. I couldn't be more pleased if it was myself."

She kissed her again, and going to pat her back once more, discovered
that she had sunk down sufficiently low in her chair to obtain the
protection of its back.

"Two thousand pounds," said Mrs. Pullen, in an awestruck voice.

"Ten hundered pounds twice over," said the carpenter, mouthing it slowly;
"twenty hundered pounds."

He got up from the table, and instinctively realizing that he could not
do full justice to his feelings with the baby in h