"She must have looked a queer un, lassie, flattening her nose against the winder-pane." "Aunt Stingy said she'd welt her down fine if she could once catch holt." "Your aunt don't seem to have thought her a beauty. Not with her nose against the glass! What did you think yourself, lassie?" "I didn't seen her." Her head shook a long continuous negative. "How do ye make that out, lass?" "We ply at bein' oarposite sides of the winder-pine. Her outside--me in!" "Well, then--o' course you _saw_ her, lassie. You've got eyes in your head." "I was a-flotting of my own nose against the glast, inside, too clost to see. Right oarposite--yass!" And then explained, at some expense of words, that this gyme, or game, was played by two little girls, or little boys, or a sample of each, jamming their noses one against the other as it were with the cold, unpleasant glass between. The gratification of doing this, whatever it was, might be enhanced and intensified by a similar treatment of their tongue-tips. This last variation caused Lizarann to end up with: "Outside tistés of rine. Inside tistés of cleanin' windows." "I don't see no kissin' to be got out of that," said Jim. But the inventors of this game had evidently never anticipated its adoption by grown-up persons, and did not advise it. _Their_ low natures could not enter into it. It was, however, made clear why Bridgetticks was invisible during an innings--if the term is permissible. * * * * * But oh, to think of it! Poor Jim had never seen his little lass, whose chatter had supplied him with a vivid image--albeit, perhaps, a false one--of her friend of ten years old. Her voice and touch were all he had to live for; but the only image of her he could get was from a grudging admission of his sister's that she might grow to be like her mother in time, but she would never have her looks. These looks were only admitted by Mrs. Steptoe for strategic purposes--videlicet, the cheapening of her brother's one possession and emphasizing of his losses. She may have had no defined intention of giving him pain, but the attitude of thought implied formed part of a scheme of Jeremiads her life was devoted to fostering and maturing. The looks of Lizarann's mother were the only pivot on which discussion of the child's own could turn naturally and easily. The embittered and unsympathetic disposition of her aunt made communication about them on other lines difficult or impossible to poor Jim.