just as they had been left by Mrs Brownsmith.

"Which it's a dead waste, Master Grant," she used to finish by saying,
"as there's several as I know would be glad to have 'em; but as to
that--Lor' bless yer!"

It was not often that Mrs Dodley spoke, but when she did it was to
inveigh against some oppression or trouble.

Candles were a great burden to the scrupulously clean woman.

"Tens I says," she confided to me one day, "but he will have eights, and
what's the consequence? If I want to do a bit of extry needle-work I
might light up two tens, but I should never have the heart to burn two
eights at once, for extravagance I can't abear. Ah! he's a hard master,
and I'm sorry for you, my dear."

"Why?" I said.

"Ah! you'll find out some day," she said, shaking her head and then
bustling off to her work.

I had not much companionship, for Ike was generally too busy to say a
word, and though after the pear adventure Shock did nothing more
annoying to me than to stand now and then upon his head, look at me
upside down, and point and spar at me with his toes, we seemed to get to
be no better friends.

He took to that trick all at once one day in a soft bit of newly dug
earth. He was picking up stones, and I was sticking fresh labels at the
ends of some rows of plants, when all at once he uttered a peculiar
monkey-like noise, down went his head, up went his heels, and I stared
in astonishment at first and then turned my back.

This always annoyed Shock; but one day when he stood up after his quaint
fashion I was out of temper and had a bad headache, so I ran to him, and
he struck at me with his feet, just as if they had been hands, only he
could not have doubled them up. I was too quick for him though, and
with a push drove him down.

He jumped up again directly and repeated the performance.

I knocked him down angrily.

He stood up again.

I knocked him down again.

And so on, again and again, when he turned and ran off laughing, and I
went on with my work, vexed with myself for having shown temper.

Every now and then a fit of low spirits used to attack me. It was
generally on washing-days, when Mrs Dodley filled the place with steam
early in the morning by lighting the copper fire, and then seeming to be
making calico puddings to boil and send an unpleasant soapy odour
through the house.

Doors and chair backs were so damp and steamy then that I used to be
glad to go out and see Shock, whom I often