"And you'd send Dick to that place when I said they shouldn't go near the house," said her husband, angrily. "Take the fish and cook it for supper. Not a bit o' my fish shall they have." "But the milk. What am I to do for the milk for the child now she's ill?" "What have yer done afore?" demanded her husband; and the poor woman was obliged to confess that she had taken milk from the man as he went past in his cart to the village each day since the child had been there. "She couldn't do wi'out milk," protested Mrs. Coomber. "How do you know she couldn't?" said her husband. "What business have you to spend money for milk--what business have you wi' money at all?" he inquired, suspiciously; for he saw in this wastefulness a cause for the recent strange scarcity of whisky; and he felt he had been deeply wronged. His quarrel with Hayes had also been disregarded, and this made him further angry with his wife, and he strictly charged her never to have any more dealings with any of the farm people. "We can live very well without milk," he said. "I will feed the little 'un, and you'll see she can eat fish and bread as well as the rest of us." It was useless for Mrs. Coomber to protest against this; she knew if her husband made up his mind to do anything he would do it; but she almost dreaded supper-time coming, for she could not tell how Tiny would like the proposed change in her nurse and diet. But as it happened the little girl was very pleased to be lifted out of bed and seated on Coomber's knee at the table. "Me likes 'ou," she said, patting his cheek with her little white hand; and she ate the fish and bread as though she was quite used to such food. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. TINY'S HOPE. The slant rays of the setting sun lay on the wide stretch of level sand surrounding Bermuda Point, for the tide was out, and had left it smooth, or slightly rippled as with tiny wavelets. Standing at the very edge of the sands, with her eyes shaded, and her clothes blowing round her bare legs, was a little fair-haired girl. She was slender and delicate-looking still, in spite of the sun-browned arms and face. Months had passed, but Tiny was still at the Point. She stood gazing seawards for some minutes, and then turned and walked slowly across the rippled sand. "I can't see him, Dick," she said, in a disappointed tone. "Oh, well, never mind," said the boy, who sat scooping the loose sand up in a heap, beyond the reach of the present ordinary tides. "Have you filled both the baskets?" asked the little girl, as she waded through the loose dry sand to where the boy was sitting. "No, that I ain't," answered Dick, "mother said you could pick the samphire to-day." "Yes, but you said you'd help me," said the girl, walking steadily across the sand to the salt-marsh beyond. Here the samphire grew in abundance, and the little girl set to work to fill the two large baskets that stood near.