he door behind us and helped ourselves to what
supper we could find--which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie
Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to
gain breath, she sat down to her lace pillow. Her dexterity was
marvellous. She _threw_ the bobbins about. I could not follow them with
my eyes. She makes stock patterns only; refuses to be taught fresh
patterns at her time of life, and cannot read them up for herself
because she has never learned to read. The butterfly is her
masterpiece. Working from early morning till evening's gossip-time, she
can earn no less than nine pennies a day. What the lace-selling shop
makes out of her, the lace-selling shop does not state.

As a midwife, no doubt, she earns more. She must be full of tonic
sayings. I am told that when her patients are dying, she takes away the
pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that
they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick
have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep
clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she
has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she
bursts out: "Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to be sure!"

She has her share of professional pride, but nevertheless I should like
to know how many corpses she really has laid out for burial--and what
she thought the while.

Usually she comes in just before supper-time:

"Ain't yu gone yet? I know; yu got some mark or other to Seacombe. Come
on! which o' the young ladies is't? Out wi' it! Which on 'em is't?"
When I tell her that she is the best girl in Seacombe and that I won't
give her the chuck until she finds me a mark as youthful as herself and
a hundred times as rich, she says:

"Then yu'm done! her won't hae nort still, 'cause I an't got nort, an'
a hundred times nort be nothing--he-he-he! I knaws thiccy."

The jokes, 'tis true, are poor. But the Tough Old Stick's enjoyment
franks them all. You may fling a stinging fact in her face; tell her,
if you like, that she could find plenty of marks for herself because,
being old, she will have to die soon and then the poor fellow would be
free again. "I know't!" she says, and flings you back another stinging
fact. Admirable Old Stick! She never flinches at a fact, howsoever
grisly it be.

Above all, she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly
blasphemy--imaginary details, say, about he