ut he saw no remedy.

"Can't we get something a little better for Lizzy?" said he, as he
pushed his plate aside, his appetite for once gone before his meal was
half eaten.

"Not unless you can earn more," replied the wife. "Cut and carve, and
manage as I will, it's as much as I can do to get common food."

Claire pushed himself back from the table, and without saying a word
more, went up to his shop in the garret, and sat down to work. There
was a troubled and despondent feeling about his heart. He did not light
his pipe as usual, for he had smoked up the last of his tobacco on the
evening before. But he had a penny left, and with that, as soon as he
had finished mending a pair of boots and taken them home, he meant to
get a new supply of the fragrant weed. The boots had only half an
hour's work on them. But a few stitches had been taken by the cobbler,
when he heard the feeble voice of Lizzy calling to him from the bottom
of the stairs. That voice never came unregarded to his ears. He laid
aside his work, and went down for his patient child, and as he took her
light form in his arms, and bore her up into his little work-shop, he
felt that he pressed against his heart the dearest thing to him in
life. And with this feeling, came the bitter certainty that soon she
would pass away and be no more seen. Thomas Claire did not often
indulge in external manifestations of feeling; but now, as he held
Lizzy in his arms, he bent down his face and kissed her cheek tenderly.
A light, like a gleam of sunshine, fell suddenly upon the pale
countenance of the child, while a faint, but loving smile played about
her lips. Her father kissed her again, and then laid her upon the
little bed that was always ready for her, and once more resumed his
work.

Claire's mind had been awakened from its usual leaden quiet. The wants
of his failing child aroused it into disturbed activity. Thought beat,
for a while, like a caged bird, against the bars of necessity, and then
fluttered back into panting imbecility.

At last the boots were done, and with his thoughts now more occupied
with the supply of tobacco he was to obtain than with any thing else,
Claire started to take them home. As he walked along he passed a
fruit-shop, and the thought of Lizzy came into his mind.

"If we could afford her some of these nice things!" he said to himself.
"They would be food and medicine both, to the dear child. But," he
added, with a sigh, "we are poor!--we