Mattie sat down by the fire, and began shivering with more violence than had characterized her in the cold and fog. The disturbed shadow, flung by the fire-light--the only light there--on the wall, shivered and danced grotesquely in the rear. No one took notice of the new-comer--although more than one woman lay awake in the background. A wrinkled hag, reposing with her basket of stay-laces under her head for security's sake, winked and blinked at her for a while, and then went off into a disjointed snore--the young mother with the sick child, sat up in her share of the bed, and rocked the coughing infant backwards and forwards, till her neighbour, with an oath, swore at her for letting the cold in; then all was as Mattie had found it upon entering. Presently Mrs. Watts returned, candle in hand, smelling more aromatically of something hot and strong than ever. "Simes says it's brass, and worth eightpence, and here's the money. Strike me dead, if he said more than eightpence, there!--strike him blind, if he'll get a farden out of it!" "Where's the money?" "Here's fippence--tuppence for to-night, and a penny you owe me, that makes eightpence; and as for supper, why, I'll keep my word--no one can ever say of Mother Watts that she didn't keep her word in anythink she undertooked." "I--I don't care so much about supper as I did--ain't I just husky? No singing to-morrow, mother." "Only singing small," was the rejoinder with a grunt at her own wit; "you'd do better picking up brooches--you was allers clever with your fingers, mind you. I only wish I'd been 'arf as sharp when I was young." "I--I only wish I hadn't--found the thing," commented the girl, sorrowfully. "Well, I'm blest!" Mrs. Watts was taking off the lid of her saucepan, and probing the contents with a fork. "Fippence isn't a fortun, and the young chap gave me a ha-penny once when I was singing in Suffolk Street--I didn't mean it, somehow--I said I never would again! Don't you remember when mother died here, how she went on just at the last as to what was to become o' me; and didn't I say I'd grow up good, and stick to singing and begging, and all that _fun_--or go to the workus--or anythink?" "Ah! your mother was a fine 'un to go on sometimes." "And then I----" "Now, I don't want to hear anythink about your goings on--I don't know where you found that brassy brooch--I don't want to know--Simes don't want to know! We takes your word for it, that it was come by proper, and the less you say about it, the better; and the sooner you turns into bed, if you don't want no supper, the better too." "I don't see a good twopen'orth over there," commented Mattie; "they're as full as ever they can stick." "Take the rug, gal, and have it all to yourself, here by the fire." "Well, it's not so bad. I say--you know old Wesden?" "What, in Suffolk Street?--well."