"Yer supper's been waiting this ever so long, and it wasn't much to boast of to begin with, but there--I s'pose we may be thankful to get a bit of dry bread now." She poured the contents of the saucepan into a dish, sighing and lamenting over it as she did so. "'Tain't what I've been used to, as was always brought up respectable, and have done my duty to the children. And there's the doctor's bill--I s'pose he won't come to see Becky no more till that's paid--and there she is on her back a cripple, as you may call it, for life p'r'aps. And what is it you mean to turn to, now you've lost a good place?" As long as there was a mouthful of his supper left, Tuvvy preserved a strict silence; but when his plate was empty, he pushed it away, and said grimly, "Gaffer's goin' to let me stop on." "Stop on!" repeated Mrs Tuvvy. She stopped short in her progress across the kitchen, and let the empty plate she was carrying fall helplessly at her side. "Stop on!" she repeated. "Ain't I said so?" answered Tuvvy, pressing down the tobacco in his pipe with his thumb. Mrs Tuvvy seemed incapable of further speech, and stood gazing at her husband with her mouth partly open. It was Becky who exclaimed, with a faint colour of excitement in her cheek, "Oh father, what made him?" "Do tell us, father," added Dan, touching him gently on the arm. Tuvvy looked round at the boy's earnest face, and then down at the table, and began to draw figures on it with the stem of his pipe. Mrs Tuvvy hovered a little nearer, and Becky sat upright on her couch, with eagerness in her eyes as her father began to speak. "It was along of a little gentleman, Dennis Chester his name is, who used to come and see me work. He asked the gaffer, and gaffer said `No.' So then he says, `Will you let him stop,' says he, `if the others are agreeable?' and to that the gaffer says neither yes nor no. But this morning he sends for me, and `Tuvvy,' he says, `I've had a Round Robin about you.' `And what sort of a bird is that, master?' says I. `'Tain't a bird at all,' he says, `it's this,' and then he showed it me." "What ever was it?" asked Dan, as his father paused. Tuvvy made a large circle in the air with the stem of his pipe. "'Twas a round drawed like that on a bit of card, and inside of it was wrote as follers: `We which have signed our names, ask Mr Solace to keep Mr Tuvvy in his service.' All the men's names was round the outside, and the little gentleman's name as well." "What did Mr Solace say?" asked Dan. "He said, `You ain't deserved it, Tuvvy.'" "No more yer 'ave," said Mrs Tuvvy, regaining her speech. "But," continued her husband, "the gaffer went on to say that, along of Master Chester, who'd taken such a lot of trouble, he'd give me another chance. So that's all about it." "And in all my born days," broke out Mrs Tuvvy, "I never heard of anything so singuller. Whatever made Master Chester take such a fancy to _you_, I wonder?"