things for an at 'ome--teaspoons as
well--couldn't I make it ninepence the two dozen! That's the kind of
place where there'll be breakages. But they pay well, the breakages do."

"Well, I won't keep you now," said Gammon. "I'm going to have a peep at
the bow-wows. Could I look in after closing?"

Mrs. Clover turned her head away, pretending to observe the muscular
youth within.

"Fact is," he pursued, "I want to speak to you about Polly."

"What about her?"

"Nothing much. I'll tell you this evening."

Without more words he nodded and went off. Mrs. Clover stood for a
moment with an absent expression on her comely face, then turned into
the shop and gave the young man in shirt-sleeves a bit of her mind
about the time he was taking over his work.

She was anything but a bad-tempered woman. Her rating had no malice in
it, and only signified that she could not endure laziness.

"Hot, is it? Of course it's hot. What do you expect in June? You don't
mind the heat when you're playing cricket, I know."

"No, mum," replied the young giant with a grin.

"How many runs did you make last Saturday?"

"Fifty-three, mum, and caught out."

"Then don't go talking to me about the heat. Finish that job and run
off with this filter to Mrs. Gubbins's."

Her life had not lacked variety. Married at eighteen, after a month's
courtship, to a man of whom she knew next to nothing, she lived for a
time in Liverpool, where her husband--older by ten years--pursued
various callings in the neighbourhood of the docks. After the birth of
her only child, a daughter, they migrated to Glasgow, and struggled
with great poverty for several years. This period was closed by the
sudden disappearance of Mr. Clover. He did not actually desert his wife
and child; at regular intervals letters and money arrived from him
addressed to the care of Mrs. Clover's parents, who kept a china shop
at Islington; beyond the postmarks, which indicated constant travel in
England and abroad, these letters (always very affectionate) gave no
information as to the writer's circumstances. When Mrs. Clover had
lived with her parents for about three years she was summoned by her
husband to Dulwich, where the man had somehow established himself as a
cab proprietor; he explained his wanderings as the result of mere
restlessness, and with this cold comfort Mrs. Clover had to be content.
By degrees they settled into a not unhappy life; the girl, Minnie, was
growing up, th