"So I think, Mr Ruggles," said Mrs Jared, "and though perhaps I have no business to interfere, I cannot help saying again, that I don't at all like the way in which it is treated, poor child,--I don't think you ought to stand by and let it be beaten." "Well, I don't know, ma'am, I don't know," said Tim, humbly. "I'm afraid to interfere, to tell you the truth; for I'm out a deal, and if I were to say much, I should only make Mrs Ruggles the little thing's enemy. Really, ma'am, I try to do what's for the best; and I don't think if I tried ever so, I should make any better of it. As I said, I almost wish sometimes that she was gone, but it always nips me afterwards; for somehow, ma'am, that child seems to be all I have to love now, and you know how children will wind themselves round you, and make a home in your heart. I hope none of yours, ma'am, may know what it is to have a step--that is," said Tim, stammering, "ever be--er-- ever--ever--suffer, you know, ma'am." Tim Ruggles hid his confusion in his red handkerchief, as soon as he could prevail upon it to quit the depths of his pocket; after which he found out that it was quite time for him to take his departure, and hurried away. "I can't help taking an interest in the poor little thing," said Mrs Jared, when they were alone; "but it seems a strange story." "Very," said Jared Pellet. Volume 1, Chapter XIII. PATTY AMONG FRIENDS. Brownjohn Street, Decadia, on a bright summer's morning, when improvements had not made the neighbourhood a little less dingy than of old; when the pleasant district named after, but, all the same, a perfect disgrace to, a certain patron saint, had not recovered from the vast and clean sweep to which it had been subjected. So early in the day, there was peace. There was no fight in progress before either of the palaces famed for the dispensing of gin; the police were not binding some fierce, dishevelled, and blaspheming virago to a stretcher, and then patting their hair or whiskers in tender spots from whence locks had been ravished by the handful, previous to bearing the drunken scold to the X station, attended by a train of howling creatures, in human form, but debased by "the vitriol madness"--the poison mental and bodily sold to them by the name of "Cream of the Valley"--"of the Shadow of Death," might well have been added. The courts of the palaces were quiet as yet, and brawny-muscled bar and potmen were brightening counters, polishing plate-glass and mirrors, or burnishing brass, ready for the night, when the gas should be in full blaze. Men and women slink in and out now--coming in a dark secretive way, to partake of "pen'orths," or, as they were here facetiously termed, "coffin nails," to rouse the spirits, flagging from the effects of the previous night's debauch. Burglars and pickpockets--night-birds both--slept in their lairs, hiding from the light, and waiting in drunken sleep for the darkness that was to them their day.