and was grateful for any small mercies that came in
his way; and so was happier than many people who never knew what it is
to be hungry or in want of comforts. His greatest joy was his dear,
bright, pretty daughter Meg, who loved him dearly.

One cold day, near the end of the year, Toby had been waiting a long
time for a job, trotting up and down in his usual place before the
church, and trying hard to keep himself warm, when the bells chimed
twelve o'clock, which made Toby think of dinner.

"There's nothing," he remarked, carefully feeling his nose to make sure
it was still there, "more regular in coming round than dinner-time, and
nothing less regular in coming round than dinner. That's the great
difference between 'em." He went on talking to himself, trotting up and
down, and never noticing who was coming near to him.

"Why, father, father," said a pleasant voice, and Toby turned to find
his daughter's sweet, bright eyes close to his.

"Why, pet," said he, kissing her and squeezing her blooming face between
his hands, "what's to-do? I didn't expect you to-day, Meg."

"Neither did I expect to come, father," said Meg, nodding and smiling.
"But here I am! And not alone, not alone!"

"Why you don't mean to say," observed Trotty, looking curiously at the
covered basket she carried, "that you----"

"Smell it, father dear," said Meg. "Only smell it!"

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when
she gaily interposed her hand.

"No, no, no," said Meg, with the glee of a child. "Lengthen it out a
little. Let me just lift up the corner; just a lit-tle, ti-ny cor-ner,
you know," said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost
gentleness, and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being
overheard by something inside the basket. "There, now; what's that?"

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and
cried out in rapture:

"Why, it's hot," he said.

But to Meg's great delight he could not guess what it was that smelt so
good.

"Polonies? Trotters? Liver? Pigs' feet? Sausages?" he tried one after
the other. At last he exclaimed in triumph. "Why, what am I a-thinking
of? It's tripe."

And it was.

"And so," said Meg, "I'll lay the cloth at once, father; for I have
brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a
pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that
for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there's nobody to prev