omance. Indeed, I think she holds to it all
the tighter for her hardheadedness in every-day affairs.

Midway through tea, Straighty crept into the kitchen. "What do _yu_
want?" shouted Grannie Pinn. "Bain't there enough kids yer now?"
Straighty stood in the centre of the kitchen, sucking three fingers
and looking shyly at me from beneath her tousled tow-coloured hair.

"You've not forgotten me, Straighty?" I asked. "You're not frightened
of me, are you?"

"Go an' speak to 'en proper," commanded Grannie Pinn. "Wer's yer
manners, Dora?"

"_Yu_ didn' speak to me proper, Grannie Pinn! Wer's yours?"

"Aw, my dear soul! Now du 'ee shut up wi' yer chake!"

Straighty remained sucking her fingers in the middle of the kitchen.
She seemed about to cry. Quite suddenly, her eyes brightened. She
glided over to me, put her wet fingers round my neck ("Dora!" from Mrs
Widger), and gave me a big kiss on the chin. Then she told me all about
everything, sitting with her head on my shoulder in the old courting
chair.

A tiny little episode, I grant; but very sweet.

"That's your mark?" Grannie Pinn shouted. "You'll hae tu wait for she!"

Straighty is established as my mark, and takes her duties, as she has
learnt to conceive them, with amusing seriousness. She will not let me
go out through the Square without being told where I am off to, nor let
me return in house until I tell her where I have been. At the beginning
of every meal we hear her creeping up the passage; see her yellow hair
against the door-post. By the end of the meal she has summoned up
courage to claim a kiss. "Now be off tu your mother!" says Mrs Widger.

2

Mrs Widger has let the back bedroom to a young married couple possessed
of a saucer-eyed baby that cries lustily whenever its mother is out of
its sight. How they succeed in living, sleeping, baby-tending and doing
their minor cookery in the one pokey little room, already half filled
by the bedstead, is difficult to understand. They do it. We see little
of them, except just when we had rather see nothing at all.

For dinner and the subsequent cup o' tay, Mam Widger allows one hour.
But usually, before even the pudding is out of the oven, first one of
us, then another, glances round to make sure that the kettle is well on
the fire.

[Sidenote: _MRS PERKINS_]

Nowadays, however, when the kettle is beginning to sing, Mrs Perkins,
the baby in her arms, comes downstairs and proceeds to cook for her
husban