! _I'll_ hae a
bull's eye for 'ee. Now go on."

A tramp of feet went out through the passage.

Mrs Widger shovelled the crisp mackerel from the frying-pan into our
plates. Tony soused his with vinegar from an old whiskey bottle. We
lingered over our tea till he said: "Must go out an' clean they ther
boats--the popples what they damn visitors' children chucks in for to
amuse theirselves, not troubling to think us got to pick every one on
'em out be hand, an' looking daggers at 'ee when you trys to tell 'em
o'it so polite as yu can. Ay, me--our work be never done."

"No more ain't mine!" snapped Mrs Widger, moving off to her washtub.

10

For the last two or three days there has been a large flat brown-paper
parcel standing against the wall on the far side of my bed. I have
wondered what it was.

This evening, after we had all finished tea, while Tony was puffing
gingerly at a cigarette (he is nothing of a smoker) with his chair
tilted back and a stockinged foot in Mrs Widger's lap, Jimmy said, as
Jimmy usually says: "Gie us another caake, Mam 'Idger." He laid a very
grubby hand on the cakelets.

"Yu li'l devil!" shouted his mother. "Take yer hands off or I'll gie
'ee such a one.... Yu'd eat an eat till yu busted, I believe; an yu'm
that cawdy [finical] over what yu has gie'd 'ee...."

Tony took up the poker and made a feint at Jimmy, who jumped into the
corner laughing loudly. With an amazing contrast in tone, Mrs Widger
said quietly: "Wait a minute an' see what I got to show 'ee, if yu'm
gude."

[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S PHOTOGRAPH_]

She went upstairs with that peculiar tread of hers--as if the feet were
very tired but the rest of the body invincibly energetic,--and returned
with the flat parcel. She undid the string, the children watching with
greedy curiosity. She placed on the best-lighted chair an enlargement
of a baby's photograph, in a cheap frame, all complete. "There!" she
said.

"What is ut?" asked Tony. "Why, 'tis li'l Rosie!"

"Wer did 'ee get 'en?" he continued more softly. "Yu an't had 'en
give'd 'ee?"

"Give'd me? No! Thic cheap-jack.... But 'tisn' bad, is it?"

"What cheap-jack?"

"Why, thic man to the market-house--wer I got the cruet."

"O-oh! I didn' never see he.... What did 'ee pay 'en for thic then?"

"Never yu mind. 'Twasn't none o' yours what I paid. What do 'ee think
o'it?"

"'Tisn' bad--very nice," remarked Tony, bending before the picture,
examining it in all lights. "Iss;