e
'a'pen'y. Plenty for two if you know how to cook it right, and don't cut
it to waste." In this he showed a thoughtfulness beyond his years, for
the knowledge that the amount of flesh, on any bone, may be
doubled--even quadrupled--by the skill of its carver, is rarely found
except in veterans.

Aunt Elizabeth Jane paid a tribute of admiration. "My word!" said she,
"who ever would have said a boy could! Now you shall cook that chop
while I tell you how." So the fifty-second Psalm lapsed, and Michael was
at liberty to forget Doeg the Edomite.

But the glass of beer claimed attention first, because it would never do
to leave that chop to get cold while he went for it next door. Aunt
Elizabeth Jane allowed Michael to take the largest glass, as he had read
so good and bought his own chop, and with it he crossed the wall into
the garden of The Pigeons, as the story has seen him do before.

Miss Juliarawkins, summoned by a whistle through the keyhole, looked a
good deal better in sackcloth and ashes than she had done in several
discordant colours. She was going to stop as long as ever she could in
mourning for her father, so as to get the wear out of the stuff, and
make it of some use. Some connection might die, by good luck. She was
one of those that held with making the same sackcloth and ashes do for
two.

She looked critically at the rather large tumbler Micky had brought for
his beer, and made difficulties about filling of it right up, even with
the top. For this was a supply under contract. A glass full was to be
paid for as a short half-pint. But as Miss Hawkins truly said, no glass
had any call to be half as big as Saint Paul's. Her customer, however,
was not to be put off in this way. A glass was a glass, and a half-pint
was a half a pint. There was no extry reduction when the glass was
undersized. You took the good with the bad.

A voice Micky knew growled from a recess:--"Give the young beggar full
measure, Juli_ar_. What he means is, you go by a blooming average."

Miss Hawkins filled up the glass this once, but said:--"You tell your
Aunt Treadwell she'll have to keep below the average till Christmas. _I_
never see such a glass!"

Micky was not sorry to find that he could deliver his message direct. He
had not hoped to come upon the man himself. He paid for his beer on
contract terms, and said confidentially:--"I say, missis, I got a
message for him in there."

"Mrs. Treadwell's nephew Michael from next