ring a
ray of sunshine with her.

She lived with an old man she called "Uncle Bobo," who kept a curiously
mixed assortment of wares, in the little dark shop where he had lived,
man and boy, for fifty years.

He was professedly a dealer in nautical instruments, the manufacture of
which was carried on in Birmingham or Sheffield. Every now and then a
large packing-case would excite the inhabitants of the row, as it was
borne on one of the Yarmouth carts constructed on purpose for the
convenience of passing through the rows, and dropped down with a
tremendous thud on the pavement opposite Mr. Boyd's door.

No wheels but the wheels of these carts were ever heard in the row,
unless it were a wheelbarrow or a truck. And none of these were
welcome, as it was difficult for foot-passengers to pass if one of
these vehicles stopped the way.

The nautical instruments by no means represented all Mr. Boyd's
stock-in-trade. Compasses and aneroids and ship's lamps were the
superior articles to be sold. But there were endless odds and
ends--"curiosities"--bits of carving, two or three old figure-heads of
ships, little ship-lanthorns, and knives of all shapes and sizes, balls
of twine, rolls of cable, and all packed into the narrow limits of the
tiny shop.

"Uncle Bobo" was coming home one night--a Christmas night--a few years
before the time my story opens, when he heard a wailing cry as he
fitted the latch-key into his own door.

The cry attracted him, and looking down on the threshold of his home he
saw--a bundle, as it seemed to him, tightly tied up in a handkerchief.
Stooping to pick it up, the faint wailing cry was repeated, and Uncle
Bobo nearly let the bundle fall.

"It's a child--it's an infant!" he exclaimed. "Where's it dropped
from? Here, Susan!" he called to his faithful old servant, "here's a
Christmas-box for you; look alive!"

Susan, who had appeared with a light, groped through the various
articles in the shop, and received the bundle from her master's hand.

"Dear life, Mr. Boyd, what are you going to do with it then?"

"Can't say," was the answer, as Mr. Boyd rolled into the parlour, where
a bright fire was burning and the kettle singing on the hob. "Unpack
the parcel, Sue, and let's have a look."

Susan untied many knots and unrolled fold after fold of the long
scarf-shawl of black and white check in which the child was wrapped:
and then out came, like a butterfly out of a chrysalis, a little daint