ite a mistake. Uncle Bobo is wanted in the
shop, and I don't think I could have done instead of him; and then it
would have been worse for him to bear the pain than it is for me; for
when he had the gout in his toe, he did shout out, and threw the things
about when Susan went to bathe it. So it is best as it is," was little
Miss Joy's conclusion; "isn't it Goody?"

The wedding came off the next day, and the row was greatly excited by
the event.

Miss Pinckney was dressed in a cream-coloured cashmere, trimmed with
lace, and she wore an apology for a bonnet, with orange blossoms, and a
large square of tulle thrown over it.

Susan, who reported the appearance of the wedding party, which she
watched leaning out of Joy's window, exclaimed:

"All in white, or next to white! Deary me! If I was fifty, and had a
yellow skin, I wouldn't dress like a young girl. There she goes
mincing down the row, and there's a coach waiting at the end with white
horses. And there goes Mrs. Skinner looking like a lamp-post, dressed
in a grey alpaca; she looks as grim as ever. And there's poor
Bet--well, to be sure, what a frock and bonnet! They belonged to her
mother, let alone her grandmother, or p'r'aps to that pretty daughter
of hers, who ran off--she was that ill-treated by her mother she
couldn't bear it! Ah! they are a queer lot, those Skinners; they do
say Joe Skinner is a queer customer, and that he is so hard up, that's
why he's married that old lady. He will make her money spin, and there
won't be much left at the end of a year. Serve her right. I've no
patience with folks making themselves ridiklous at her time of life.
Why, my dear!" Susan said, growing confidential, as she drew her head
in from the window, when the little following of girls and boys who
lived in the row had returned from seeing the last of Miss
Pinckney--"Why, my dear! I could have married, last fall, the
lamplighter who has looked after the lamps in the row for years. But I
knew better. I told him I was forty-eight, and he was scarce
thirty-eight, and I was not going to make myself a laughing-stock. And
he went and married a young girl, and has made a good husband. So
that's all right!"

It was the same afternoon that Mrs. Harrison, being installed in her
sister's place at the shop, Bet came breathlessly up the narrow stairs
to say--

"Grandmother wants to see you."

"Oh! I'd rather not, please. I feel so afraid of your grandmother.
Don