“Ah! then comes Larry M’Gilpin—there’s an honest creature spoiled, sir, by too much willingness to help others. He is always too late at the forge or the quarry, or the mill, for he is never steady at one place, because he has to help one neighbour look for his run-a-way pig, or to put up a fence, or to run for a doctor, or something or other. Every body calls upon Larry M’Gilpin, but no one does a thing for him. I never heard of any one doing him a good turn but yourself, sir, and it was but small service he did for you. I try to be of use to him as far as I can, and Norah teaches his little girl to read, which you know is something; but his wages, somehow or other, amounts to very little the year out. How they contrive to live I cannot tell; for they have five children, all living in one room, and on the bare ground too. To be sure, he has a chimney in it, and in winter they can keep themselves warm when they have wood to burn; but they do certainly live on less means than any family I know. I do not wonder she has the name of dirty Rachel; for how can a poor creature keep a husband and five children clean, when she has not money to buy soap even. But they are a quiet, well behaved set, and disturb no one. Larry keeps the children around him, and by his eternal good humour and pleasant ways he has contrived to make us all like him; so one throws him this thing and the other that; and your little bounties have come in a very good time. He only wishes, he says, that such gentlemen as you would sprain their ankle every day.” “Is his wife lazy?—does she take in work, or go out to work?” “I can’t say that she is lazy—only spiritless like. You know a woman with five children, the oldest only eight years old, cannot be expected to do much more than take care of them; and yet Rachel would be willing to make a coarse shirt now and then, if the price was not next to nothing. But next to Larry M’Gilpin, lives the woman of women! Here, just let me lift up this sash, sir, for one minute—now listen—do you hear any thing?” “Yes, I hear some one singing; do I not?”