l the sunshine
came, when they returned with the swallows. The lady herself was a
meek, mild creature, skilful in the art of living on nothing, and
making up dresses without material. She adored her husband, and
believed him the greatest man in the world. On the occurrence of such
little household incidents as an execution, or Jack making a rapid act
of cabmanship from his own hearth to the cheerful residence of Mr Levi
in Cursitor Street, the poor little woman, after having indulged
herself in the small luxury of a 'good cry,' would go to work to pack
up shirts and socks manfully, and with great foresight, would always
bring Jack's daily food in a basket, seeing that Mr Levi's bills are
constructed upon a scale of uncommon dimensions; after which, she
would eat the dinner with him in the coffee-room, drink to better
days, play cribbage, and at last get very nearly as joyous in that
greasy, grimy, sorrow-laden room, with bars on the outside of the
windows, as if it were the happy home she possessed a few weeks ago,
and which she always hoped to possess again. As for the girls, they
were trained by too good a master and mistress not to become apt
scholars. They knew what a bill of sale was from their tenderest
years; the broker's was no unfamiliar face; and they quite understood
how to treat a man in possession. Their management of duns was
consummate. Happy Jack used to listen to the comedy of excuses and
coaxings; and when the importunate had departed, grumblingly and
unpaid, he used solemnly to kiss his daughters on the forehead, and
invoke all sorts of blessings upon his preservers, his good angels,
his little girls, who were so clever, and so faithful, and so true.

And in many respects they were good girls. The style in which they
turned frocks, put a new appearance upon hoods, and cloaks, and
bonnets, and came forth in what seemed the very lustre of novelty--the
whole got up by a skilful mutual adaptation of garments and parts of
garments--was wonderful to all lady beholders. In cookery, they beat
the famous _chef_ who sent up five courses and a dessert, made out of
a greasy pair of jack-boots and the grass from the ramparts of the
besieged town. Their wonderful little made-dishes were mere scraps and
fragments, which in any other house would have been flung away, but
which were so artistically and scientifically handled by the young
ladies, and so tossed up, and titivated, and eked out with gravies,
and sauces,