The boy at the loom confirmed this by a sidelong look of great meaning. His mother sighed so as to show a fine remaining capacity of lung, and was about to proceed about her infirm head, and a weak ancle that she had had all her life, when her visitors turned the current of her complaints upon the times. Poor wages! very poor wages! and hard work. It was a bad sort of employment. "Why, then, do you bring up your children to it? Here are five looms in this room." "Yes, ma'am; but only three for my own family. My eldest girl is a filler. Those two farther looms are let to neighbours." "And both with work in them, I see. This seems a pretty piece of black silk that your boy is about; and he seems to be doing his work well." "Pretty well, ma'am: pretty well, for the time. I thank the Almighty, Tom is a middling boy." The little lad had all the appearance of being better than a middling boy. He worked with might and main while the ladies stood by, shouting the shortest possible answers to their questions, amidst the noise of his machine. His mother gave him a smart rap on the head, and asked him where his manners were, to go on with his weaving while the ladies spoke to him. His looks conveyed his apprehension that he should have been equally found fault with if he had quitted his grasp of his shuttle without leave. He now related that he was twelve years old, had learned to weave three weeks, and had in that time woven sixteen yards, for which he was to have sixpence a-yard. The ladies thought that, in relation to him, his mother's voice ought to be made to come down again, to whatever pitch it might have risen. "And whose work is this?" asked Charlotte, examining a piece of slight French-white silk, carelessly covered with a brown-looking cloth. "That's Peggy's," replied Tom. "She has left it for to-night, to make the beds."