lt and weigh out change with a balance.

"Got a halfpenny? Quick!" he cried, running into the kitchen, where
Maggie and Mrs Nixon were engaged in some calm and endless domestic
occupation amid linen that hung down whitely.

"What for?" Maggie mechanically asked, feeling the while under her
apron.

"Paper," he said.

"At this time of night? You'll never get one at this time of night!"
she said, in her simplicity.

"Come on!"

He stamped his foot with impatience. It was absolutely astonishing, the
ignorance in which Maggie lived, and lived efficiently and in content.
Edwin filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them,
never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the
`Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she
would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by
the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five
minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England,
Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for
newsboys, and to her the night was like any other night! Yet she read
many books.

"Here's a penny," she said. "Don't forget to give it me back."

He ran out bareheaded. At the corner of the street somebody else was
expectant. He could distinguish all the words now--

"`Signal!' Special edition! Mester Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. Full
report. Gladstone's speech. Special!"

The dark running figures approached, stopping at frequent gates, and
their hoarse voices split the night. The next moment they had gone by,
in a flying column, and Edwin and the other man found themselves with
fluttering paper in their hands, they knew not how! It was the most
unceremonious snatch-and-thrust transaction that could be imagined.
Bleakridge was silent again, and its gates closed, and the shouts were
descending violently into Bursley.

"Where's father?" Maggie called out when she heard Edwin in the hall.

"Hasn't he come in yet?" Edwin replied negligently, as he mounted the
stairs with his desire.

In his room he settled himself once more under the gas, and opened the
flimsy newspaper with joy. Yes, there it was--columns, columns, in
small type! An hour or two previously Gladstone had been speaking in
Parliament, and by magic the whole of his speech, with all the little
convolutions of his intricate sentences, had got into Edwin's bedroom.
Edwin began to read, as it wer