"Now, do eat, missis; you can't live on looking, no ways you can fix it. Do eat while Tiff gets on de baby's nightgown." To please her old friend, the woman made a feint of eating, but, while Tiff's back was turned to the fire, busied herself with distributing it to the children, who had stood hungrily regarding her, as children will regard what is put on to a sick mother's plate. "It does me good to see them eat," she said, apologetically once, when Tiff, turning round, detected her in the act. "Ah, missis, may be! but _you've_ got to eat for _two_, now. What dey eat an't going to dis yer little man, here. Mind dat ar." Cripps apparently bestowed very small attention on anything except the important business before him, which he prosecuted with such devotion that very soon coffee, chicken, and dodgers, had all disappeared. Even the bones were sucked dry, and the gravy wiped from the dish. "Ah, that's what I call comfortable!" said he, lying back in his chair. "Tiff, pull my boots off! and hand out that ar demijohn. Sue, I hope you've made a comfortable meal," he said, incidentally, standing with his back to her, compounding his potation of whiskey and water; which having drank, he called up Teddy, and offered him the sugar at the bottom of the glass. But Teddy, being forewarned by a meaning glance through Tiff's spectacles, responded, very politely,-- "No, I thank you, pa. I don't love it." "Come here, then, and take it off like a man. It's good for you," said John Cripps. The mother's eyes followed the child wishfully; and she said, faintly, "Don't John!--don't!" And Tiff ended the controversy by taking the glass unceremoniously out of his master's hand. "Laws bless you, massa, can't be bodered with dese yer young ones dis yer time of night! Time dey's all in bed, and dishes washed up. Here, Tedd," seizing the child, and loosening the buttons of his slip behind, and drawing out a rough trundle-bed, "you crawl in dere, and curl up in your nest; and don't you forget your prars, honey, else maybe you'll never wake up again." Cripps had now filled a pipe with tobacco of the most villainous character, with which incense he was perfuming the little apartment. "Laws, massa, dat ar smoke an't good for missis," said Tiff. "She done been sick to her stomach all day." "Oh, let him smoke! I like to have him enjoy himself," said the indulgent wife. "But, Fanny, you had better go to bed, dear. Come here and kiss me, child; good-night,--good-night!" The mother held on to her long, and looked at her wishfully; and when she had turned to go, she drew her back, and kissed her again, and said, "Good-night, dear child, good-night!" Fanny climbed up a ladder in one corner of the room, through a square hole, to the loft above.