s
coral?" as, opening a drawer in the dresser, she discovered Beck's
treasure. "Dear me, it is a very handsome one; why, these bells
look like gold!" and suspicion of her protege's honesty for a moment
contracted her thoughtful brow. "However on earth did you come by this,
Mrs. Becky?"

"Sure and sartin," answered Becky, dropping her mutilated courtesy, "I
be's glad it be found now, instead of sum days afore, or I might have
been vicked enough to let it go with the rest to the pop-shop; and I'm
sure the times out of mind ven that 'ere boy was a h-urchin that I've
risted the timtashung and said, 'No, Becky Carruthers, that maun't go to
my h-uncle's!'"

"And why not, my good woman?"

"Lor' love you, marm, if that curril could speak, who knows vot it might
say,--eh, lad, who knows? You sees, marm, my good man had not a long
been dead; I could not a get no vork no vays. 'Becky Carruthers,' says
I, 'you must go out in the streets a begging!' I niver thought I
should a come to that. But my poor husband, you sees, marm, fell from a
scaffol',--as good a man as hever--"

"Yes, yes, you told me all that before," said Mrs. Mivers, growing
impatient, and already diverted from her interest in the coral by a
new cargo, all bright from the tinman, which, indeed, no less
instantaneously, absorbed the admiration both of Beck and his nurse.
And what with the inspection of these articles, and the comments each
provoked, the coral rested in peace on the dresser till Mrs. Mivers,
when just about to renew her inquiries, was startled by the sound of the
Dutch clock striking four,--a voice which reminded her of the lapse of
time and her own dinner-hour. So, with many promises to call again and
have a good chat with her humble friend, she took her departure, amidst
the blessings of Becky, and the less noisy, but not less grateful,
salutations of Beck.

Very happy was the evening these poor creatures passed together over
their first cup of tea from the new bright copper kettle and the almost
forgotten luxury of crumpets, in which their altered circumstances
permitted them without extravagance to indulge. In the course of
conversation Beck communicated how much he had been astonished by
recognizing the visitor of Grabman, the provoker of the irritable
grave-stealer, in the familiar companion of his master; and when Becky
told him how often, in the domestic experience her vocation of charing
had accumulated, she had heard of the ruin brough