in house sune."

Voices from the passage: "Mam! Tay! Mam, I wants my tay!"

[Sidenote: _TEA-TIME_]

A deeper voice: "Missis, wer's my tay? Got ort nice to eat?"

It was Tony himself, accompanied by a small boy and a slightly larger
small girl.

"Hullo, sir! Yu'm come then. Do 'ee think you can put up wi' our little
shanty? Missis ought to ha' laid for 'ee in the front room. Us got a
little parlour, you know.--I be so wet as a drownded corpse, Missis!"

The two children stood on the other side of the table, staring at me as
if I were a wild beast behind bars which they scarcely trusted. "'Tis a
gen'leman!" exclaimed the girl.

"Coo'h!" the boy ejaculated.

Tony turned on them with make-believe anger: "Why don' 'ee git yer tay?
Don' 'ee know 'tis rude to stare?"

"Now then, you children," Mrs Widger continued in a strident voice,
buttering two hunks of bread with astonishing rapidity. "Take off thic
hat, Mabel. _Sit_ down, Jimmy."

"Coo'h! Jam!" said Jimmy. "Jam zide plaate, like the gen'leman, please,
Mam Widger."

"When you've eat that."

I never saw children munch so fast.

Tony took off his boots and stockings, and wrung out the ends of his
trousers upon the hearth-rug. He pattered to the oven; opened the door;
sniffed.

"Her's got summat for my tay, I can see. What is it, Missis? Fetch it
out----quick, sharp! Mackerel! Won' 'ee hae one, sir? Ther's plenty
here."

Whilst Mrs Widger was helping him to the rest of his food, he ate the
mackerel with his fingers. Finally, he soaked up the vinegar with
bread, licked his finger-tips and turned towards me. "Yu'm in the
courting chair, sir. That's where me an' Missis used to sit when we was
courting, en' it, Annie? Du 'ee see how we've a-broke the arm? When yu
gets a young lady, us'll lend 'ee thic chair. Didn' know as I'd got a
little wife like thees yer, did 'ee? Ay, Annie!"

He turned round and chucked her under the chin.

"G'out, you dirty cat!" cried Mrs Widger, flinging herself back in the
chair--yet not displeased.

It was a pretty playful sight, although Mrs Widger's voice is rather
like a newspaper boy's when she raises it.

2

This morning, when I arrived downstairs, the kitchen was all of a
caddle. Children were bolting their breakfast, seated and afoot; were
washing themselves and being washed; were getting ready and being got
ready for school. Mrs Widger looked up from stitching the seat of a
small boy's breeches _in situ_. "I've a-