“So I was off quick stick to Widow Cutthumb’s; and there, outside the door, I seen that Bat Osborne, the most owdacious boy in all Sunbury. ‘Halloa!’ says he, ‘Poll, you do look stunnin’. Got a baker’s roll a-risin’, by the way you be a-pantin’! Give us a lock of your hair, again’ the time when we gets old,’ he says. And afore I could give him a box on his ear, out he spreads his fingers, some way he must have learned—for I never could ’a doed it myself, no, that I couldn’t—and away goes all my black-hair down over all my shoulders, just the same as if it was Sunday going on for three years back. That vexed I were, I can assure you, Mr. Kit—well, mother knows best how I put it up that very same morning for the cleaning, and our Annie to hold the black pins for me—but get at him I couldn’t, to give him one for himself. He were half across the street, afore I could see out; and he hollered out some imperence as made all the others grinny. But I’ll have my change, afore next Sunday week, I will. “When I got back, Mr. Kit, you may suppose, all about the door and the hat-brim was gone clean out of my mind, as if it never was there; and I come away home, without a word about it, and never thought of it nother, till I lay awake in bed and heered our own door creak, when father went to spy the weather. But oh, if I had only thought about it, Mr. Kit, perhaps missus mightn’t never ’a been took off!” CHAPTER XXXVIII. NONE. AT this beginning of my great trouble, I used to be worried, more than common sense would warrant, by the easy way in which other people took my distress, even while I was among them. If anything occurred to make them laugh, they laughed with all their hearts at things, in which I could perceive no joke at all. I dare say they were right, and I was wrong; but I felt that I should not have laughed at all, if the tables had been turned upon them, as I wished they had been. That is to say, if they had been in bitter grief, and I had been standing outside to help them. For the policemen I could make all allowance, because they must get seasoned by their profession, even as the lawyers do; but it did seem a little bit unnatural at first, that some men, to whom I would gladly have lent my last shilling but one, if they had wanted it, should be ready to put their hands into their pockets, not to feel if there was anything there for my good, but to enable them to enjoy a broad grin at leisure, if the least bit of laughable nature turned up. But one thing I will say for the women, there was scarcely so much as a smile among them; they could understand what I had lost, and they knew (perhaps from self-examination) that a good wife is not to be got every day.