ll me what I can do for you, Betty my friend,' said Mrs
Boffin confidentially, 'if not to-day, next time.'

'Thank you all the same, ma'am, but I want nothing for myself. I can
work. I'm strong. I can walk twenty mile if I'm put to it.' Old Betty
was proud, and said it with a sparkle in her bright eyes.

'Yes, but there are some little comforts that you wouldn't be the worse
for,' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Bless ye, I wasn't born a lady any more than
you.'

'It seems to me,' said Betty, smiling, 'that you were born a lady, and
a true one, or there never was a lady born. But I couldn't take anything
from you, my dear. I never did take anything from any one. It ain't that
I'm not grateful, but I love to earn it better.'

'Well, well!' returned Mrs Boffin. 'I only spoke of little things, or I
wouldn't have taken the liberty.'

Betty put her visitor's hand to her lips, in acknowledgment of the
delicate answer. Wonderfully upright her figure was, and wonderfully
self-reliant her look, as, standing facing her visitor, she explained
herself further.

'If I could have kept the dear child, without the dread that's always
upon me of his coming to that fate I have spoken of, I could never have
parted with him, even to you. For I love him, I love him, I love him! I
love my husband long dead and gone, in him; I love my children dead and
gone, in him; I love my young and hopeful days dead and gone, in him. I
couldn't sell that love, and look you in your bright kind face. It's a
free gift. I am in want of nothing. When my strength fails me, if I
can but die out quick and quiet, I shall be quite content. I have stood
between my dead and that shame I have spoken of; and it has been kept
off from every one of them. Sewed into my gown,' with her hand upon
her breast, 'is just enough to lay me in the grave. Only see that it's
rightly spent, so as I may rest free to the last from that cruelty and
disgrace, and you'll have done much more than a little thing for me, and
all that in this present world my heart is set upon.'

Mrs Betty Higden's visitor pressed her hand. There was no more breaking
up of the strong old face into weakness. My Lords and Gentlemen and
Honourable Boards, it really was as composed as our own faces, and
almost as dignified.

And now, Johnny was to be inveigled into occupying a temporary
position on Mrs Boffin's lap. It was not until he had been piqued into
competition with the two diminutive Minders, by seeing the