idn't make 'imself, did 'e?--and my opinion is, parents should look
to themselves a bit more than they do."

As she spoke, she threw open the door of the little room where Johnny
housed. It was an odd place. The walls were plastered over with
newspaper-cuttings, with old prints from illustrated journals, with
snippets torn off valentines and keepsakes. Stuck one on another, these
formed a kind of loose wallpaper, which stirred in the draught. Tilly
went on: "I see myself to it being kept cleanish; 'e hates the girl to
come bothering round. Oh, just Johnny's rubbish!" For Mary had stooped
curiously to the table which was littered with a queer collection of
objects: matchboxes on wheels; empty reels of cotton threaded on
strings; bits of wood shaped in rounds and squares; boxes made of
paper; dried seaweed glued in patterns on strips of cardboard. "He's
for ever pottering about with 'em. What amusement 'e gets out of it,
only the Lord can tell."

She did not mention the fact, known to Mary, that when Johnny had a
drinking-bout it was she who looked after him, got him comfortably to
bed, and made shift to keep the noise from his father's ears. Yes,
Tilly's charity seemed sheerly inexhaustible.

Again, there was the case of Jinny's children.

For in this particular winter Tilly had exchanged her black silk for a
stuff gown, heavily trimmed with crepe. She was in mourning for poor
Jinny, who had died not long after giving birth to a third daughter.

"Died OF the daughter, in more senses than one," was Tilly's verdict.

John had certainly been extremely put out at the advent of yet another
girl; and the probability was that Jinny had taken his reproaches too
much to heart. However it was, she could not rally; and one day Mary
received a telegram saying that if she wished to see Jinny alive, she
must come at once. No mention was made of Tilly, but Mary ran to her
with the news, and Tilly declared her intention of going, too. "I
suppose I may be allowed to say good-bye to my own sister, even though
I'm not a Honourable?"

"Not that Jinn and I ever really drew together," she continued as the
train bore them over the ranges. "She'd too much of poor pa in 'er. And
I was all ma. Hard luck that it must just be her who managed to get
such a domineering brute for a husband. You'll excuse me, Mary, won't
you?--a domineering brute!"

"And to think I once envied her the match!" she went on meditatively,
removing her bonnet and s