"What's the good of grumbling?" grunted Jared; and then there was silence, only broken by the clicking of needle against thimble. "When was she taken ill?" said Mrs Jared then. "What? Mrs Nimmer?--last week. Break up, I think. She's past seventy." Mrs Jared sighed again, and then Jared took up the ball as he went on busily cleaning the keys of the instrument. "Children are expensive luxuries. Costly; they do eat so furiously; and I don't believe there ever were such children as ours to eat--bless 'em. Poor folks' children ought to be born without appetites, instead of coming into the world with a double share. Some people do, I think, reckon the poor to be a different race to their noble selves; and if they are to be so looked on, it does seem a pity that Nature don't take the matter up and cover them with feathers or wool. What a saving it would be if they'd only moult every year and come out in a new suit!" "Jared, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" said his wife. "So I am, my dear," said Jared, screwing up his face; "but it was you who grumbled. `Like as the arrows in the hand of a giant;' and `Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.' That's it, isn't it? But they didn't pay rent and rates and taxes in those days, and every man had his own freehold in the land of Israel. Ah! there was no Duplex Street in the land in those days." "Nor no Decadia," said Mrs Jared, tartly. "No," said Jared, "nor no St Runwald's. By the way, I wonder who used to mend their musical instruments at that time." Here Jared gave a loud nasal "whang-whung" upon the clarionet. "There were the trumpets they blew before Jericho, you know," he continued. "They must have got cracked some time or other. They couldn't have had organs though, and Ichabods wern't invented to blow. `To repairing clarionet, ninepence,'" he muttered, writing a little entry in a pocket-book. "Never mind the expense, my dear. Look at the breed: not such children anywhere. Talk about arrows: sharp as needles. I wish, though, you'd ask that little one of Tim's here to play with them a little oftener. I like the child, and--and well there, I believe it's really an act of kindness." "Poor little thing, yes," said Mrs Jared; "but she's not like a child; she's so old and strange, and don't seem to mix with them. Mr Ruggles came this afternoon just as Janet came up to the door." "Tim Ruggles--what did he want? I don't owe him a penny." "Don't talk in that way, dear, just as if all the people who came to the house wanted money." "Well, don't they?" said Jared. "No, dear, of course not, not all; and I don't think you ought to speak like that." "Consequences of long habit, my dear," said Jared. "And besides, Mr Ruggles never troubled you for money, though it has been owing to him sometimes till I've been ashamed to see him."