How many a matrimonial bicker has been interrupted and ended by the innocent smile of “one of these little ones”! How many an ill-assorted couple have been kept from separation by the homely consideration of “what should be done with the children”! How many an evil desire, how many an unkind thought, has been quenched at its very birth by the pure, open gaze of a guileless child! The stern, severe man, disgusted with the world, and disappointed in his best affections, has a corner in his heart for those whom he prizes as his own flesh and blood; the passionate, impetuous woman, yearning for the love she seeks in vain at home, her mind filled with an image of which it is sin even to think, and beset by the hundred temptations to which those are exposed who pass their lives in wedded misery, pauses on the very threshold, and is saved from guilt when she thinks of her darlings. Sunshine and music do they make in a house, with their bright, happy faces, the patter of their little feet, and the ringing echoes of their merry laugh. Grudge not to have the quiver full of them. Love and prize them whilst you may; for the hour will come at last, and your life will be weary and your hearth desolate when they take wing and fly away. So Tom Blacke and his wife are reconciled for the time, and would be comparatively happy, were it not for the grinding anxiety ever present to their minds of how to “make both ends meet”--that consideration which poisons the comfort of many a homely dwelling, and which in their case is doubtless their own fault, or at least the fault of the “pater familias,” but none the less bitter on that account. “There is the baker to pay, and the rent,” sighed Gingham, enumerating them on her fingers; “and the butcher called this morning with his account; to be sure it is but little, and little there is to meet it with. I shall be paid to-day for the plain-work, and I got a bit of washing yesterday, that brought me in sevenpence-halfpenny,” she proceeded, immersed in calculation; “and then we shall be three-and-eightpence short--three-and-eight-pence! and where to get it I don’t know, if I was to drop down dead this minute!” “I _must_ have a little money to-day, too, missus,” said Tom, in a hoarse, dogged voice; “can’t ye put the screw on a little tighter? A man may as well be starved to death as worried to death; and I can’t face ‘The Feathers’ again without wiping off a bit of the score, ye know.” Gingham’s eye glanced at the Sunday gown, hanging on a nail behind the door--a black silk one, of voluminous folds and formidable rustle, the last remnant of respectability left--and she thought _that_, too, must follow the rest to the pawnbroker’s, to that receptacle of usury with which, alas! she was too familiar, and from which even now she possessed sundry mocking duplicates, representing many a once-prized article of clothing and furniture.