"I can see he's well taken care of," she observed, turning the child's clothes with a mother's hand. "His skin shows how healthy he is, and he's as clean as a new pin." Mrs. Mole glanced sharply in her visitor's face. "I ask yer pardon, ma'am," she said, "I kep on calling of you '_miss_,' and maybe you've children of your own." Hugging the boy's head to her breast Jin took no notice of this remark, but asked in turn, how long the child had been there. The question, though simple, produced a narrative of considerable volume, digressive, complicated, not free from tautology, and ample, even exuberant in detail. It comprised Mrs. Mole's girlhood, early life, peculiar character, and extraordinary experiences, together with a sketch of the late Mr. Mole's biography, his failure in the undertaking business, and the reasons which prompted her, the narrator, to accept him for a husband; the birth of two children, with red noses, the image of Mole, both of whom, to use her own expression, she had "buried;" the unaccountable disappearance of their father, taking with him whatever portable property was in their joint possession, including bed and bedding, an eight-day clock, and a warming-pan; the deceitfulness of the male sex in general, and their sad tendency to falsehood, coupled with inebriety; the inscrutable ways of Providence, by which it seemed ordered that her own sex should be "put upon" in all relations of life; the difficulty, which no one could contradict, of earning bread, as a lone woman, with rent and taxes to pay, everything rising in price, except her own labour, and an inflexible determination to keep herself respectable; the matrimonial offer she had received not longer back than five years gone last Easter Monday, from an energetic bargeman, of imposing appearance, and a bad habit of swearing "awful," which offer she could not prudently entertain, partly from uncertainty as to Mole's fate, partly from suspicion of the proposer's solvency, not to say sobriety; the depression of spirits resulting from this disappointment of the affections, and the "lonesomeness" of the cottage in the long winter nights, when she felt as if she "couldn't hardly a-bear it without a drop o' comfort." Finally, the determination she was driven to of taking in a child to nurse, "as should make the little place seem home-like, and help to get a livin' for us both."