forty, or fifty or sixty--no one could tell which. Lucy looked up, and said, "That is Mr. Spelt; that is not your mother." "Well, but I call him my mother. I can't have two fathers, you know. So I call Mr. Spelt my mother; and so he is." Here she looked up and smiled knowingly to the little tailor, who, leaning forward to the window, through which, reaching from roof to floor of his cage, his whole form was visible, nodded friendlily to the little girl in acknowledgment of her greeting. But it was now time for Lucy to go. As soon as she had disappeared beyond the archway, Mattie turned toward the workshops. Mr. Spelt saw her coming, and before she had reached them, the upper half of the door was open, and he was stretching down his arms to lift her across the shoemaking region, into his own more celestial realm of tailoring. In a moment she was sitting in the farthest and snuggest corner, not cross-legged, but with her feet invisible in a heap of cuttings, from which she was choosing what she would--always with a reference to Mr. Spelt--for the dressing of a boy-doll which he had given her. This was a very usual proceeding--so much so that Mattie and the tailor sat for nearly an hour without a word passing between them beyond what sprung from the constructive exigencies of the child. Neither of them was given to much utterance, though each had something of the peculiar gift of the Ancient Mariner, namely, "strange power of speech." They would sit together sometimes for half a day without saying a word; and then again there would be an oasis of the strangest conversation in the desert of their silence--a bad simile, for their silence must have been a thoughtful one to blossom into such speech. But the first words Mattie uttered on this occasion, were of a somewhat mundane character. She heard a footstep pass below. She was too far back in the cell to see who it was, and she did not lift her eyes from her work. "When the cat's away, the mice will play," she said. "What are you thinking about, Mattie?" asked the tailor. "Well, wasn't that Mr. Worboise that passed? Mr. Boxall must be out. But he needn't go there, for somebody's always out this time o' day." "What do you mean, Mattie?" again asked the tailor. "Well, perhaps you don't understand such things, Mr. Spelt, not being a married man." Poor Mr. Spelt had had a wife who had killed herself by drinking all his earnings; but perhaps Mattie knew nothing about that. "No more I am. You must explain it to me." "Well, you see, young people will be young people." "Who told you that?" "Old Mrs. Boxall says so. And that's why Mr. Worboise goes to see Miss Burton, _I_ know. I told you so," she added, as she heard his step returning. But Thomas bore a huge ledger under his arm, for which Mr. Stopper had sent him round to the court. Very likely, however, had Lucy been at home, he might have laid a few minutes more to the account of the errand.