with a clean handkerchief, which
she must surely have brought into the room for the purpose. "If you
had taken some beautiful young lady--"

"I have taken a beautiful young lady," said Mr Whittlestaff, now
becoming more angry than ever.

"You won't listen to me, sir, and then you boil over like that. No
doubt Miss Mary is as beautiful as the best on 'em. I knew how it
would be when she came among us with her streaky brown cheeks, ou'd
make an anchor wish to kiss 'em." Here Mr Whittlestaff again became
appeased, and made up his mind at once that he would tell Mary about
the anchor as soon as things were smooth between them. "But if it had
been some beautiful young lady out of another house,--one of them
from the Park, for instance,--who hadn't been here a'most under my
own thumb, I shouldn't 've minded it."

"The long and the short of it is, Mrs Baggett, that I am going to be
married."

"I suppose you are, sir."

"And, as it happens, the lady I have selected happens to have been
your mistress for the last two years."

"She won't be my missus no more," said Mrs Baggett, with an air of
fixed determination.

"Of course you can do as you like about that. I can't compel any one
to live in this house against her will; but I would compel you if I
knew how, for your own benefit."

"There ain't no compelling."

"What other place have you got you can go to? I can't conceive it
possible that you should live in any other family."

"Not in no family. Wages wouldn't tempt me. But there's them as
supposes that they've a claim upon me." Then the woman began to cry
in earnest, and the clean pocket-handkerchief was used in a manner
which would soon rob it of its splendour.

There was a slight pause before Mr Whittlestaff rejoined. "Has he
come back again?" he said, almost solemnly.

"He's at Portsmouth now, sir." And Mrs Baggett shook her head sadly.

"And wants you to go to him?"

"He always wants that when he comes home. I've got a bit of money,
and he thinks there's some one to earn a morsel of bread for him--or
rayther a glass of gin. I must go this time."

"I don't see that you need go at all; at any rate, Miss Lawrie's
marriage won't make any difference."

"It do, sir," she said, sobbing.

"I can't see why."

"Nor I can't explain. I could stay on here, and wouldn't be afraid of
him a bit."

"Then why don't you stay?"

"It's my feelings. If I was to stay here, I could just send him my
wages, and never go