, 'cause yu be come, Mister
Ronals."

"Be yu glad Mr Ronals 's come back?" his mother asked.

[Sidenote: _THE CHILDREN_]

"Iss...."

"What for?" I asked jocularly.

"'Cause yu gives us bananas--an' pennies sometimes."

"'Sthat all yu'm glad for?" said Mrs Widger. "Pennies an' bananas?"

"No vear!" said Jimmy; and he meant it.

All the while, Tommy (Jimmy's younger brother, about five years old)
was sitting up to table, looking at the jam-jar with one eye and at me
with the other. He squints most comically, and is a more self-contained
young person than Jimmy. Four of the children are at home; Bessie,
Mabel, Jimmy and Tommy; George and the eldest girl are away. Bessie and
Mabel, too, are out the greater part of the day, either at school, or
else helping their aunts, or minding babies (poor little devils!), or
running errands for the many relatives who live hereabout. Both of them
are more featureless, show less of the family likeness, than the boys.
One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times,
during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except
to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their
step-mother that: "Thic Jimmy's out to baych--I see'd 'en--playin' wi'
some boys, an' he's got his boots an' stockings so wet as...."

"Jest let 'en show his face in here! _He_ shan't hae no tea! He shall
go straight to bed!" shouts Mrs Widger, confident that hunger will
eventually drive Jimmy into her clutches.

The two girls, in fact, do not seem to enter so fully as the boys into
the life of the household, though they are always very ready to take up
the responsibility of keeping the boys in order.

"Jimmy! Tommy--there! Mother, look at thic Jimmy! Mother, Tommy's
fingering they caakes!"

"I'll gie thee such a one in a minute! Let 'lone.... Ther thee a't,
Mabel, doin' jest the same, 's if a gert maid like yu didn't ought to
know better."

"Did 'ee ever hear the like o'it?" asks Tony. "Such a buzz! Shut up,
will 'ee, or _I'll_ gie thee summut to buzz for! Wher's thic stick?"

The children merely laugh at him.

2

[Sidenote: _TONY'S WEDDING_]

At supper to-night, Tony was talking about his second wedding and about
his children, who, dead and alive, number twelve. "Iss, 'tis a round
dozen, though I'd never ha' thought it," he said reckoning them up on
his fingers. "Ther be six living an' four up to the cementry, an' two
missing, like, what nobody