"He's got a party to-night--I have been a listening to the music--they've been dancing and all manner. And laughing--my eye! they just have been a-laughing, Mother Watts--I've been laughing myself to hear 'em." "Um," was the unsympathetic response. "It's a buff-day--Wesden's gal's buff-day. You know Wesden's gal--proud of herself rather, and holds her head up in furst-rate style, as well she may with such a shop as her father's got in Suffolk Street, and good and pretty as she is, Lor bless her! I s'pose old Wesden's worth pounds and pounds now?" "Hundreds." "Hundreds and hundreds of pounds," commented Mattie, coiling herself in the rug upon the floor; "ah! I s'pose so. I often thinks, do you know, I should like to be Wesden's little gal--what a lucky thing it'd be to be turned somehow into Wesden's little gal, just at Christmas time, when fairies are about." "What!" "Real fairies, on course--not the gals with the legs in the pantermines. If there was any real fairies on course too, but I'm too knowing to b'lieve that. But if there was, I'd say, please turn me into Wesden's little gal, and give me the big doll by the parler door, and dress me like a lady in a blue meriner." "Well, you are going on nicely about Wesden's gal. That was allus your fault, Mattie--such a gal to jaw, jaw, jaw--such a clapper, clapper, clapper about everythink and everybody." "I was just a-thinking that I _was_ going it rather, but I ain't a bit sleepy, and I thought you wouldn't mind me while you was having your supper, and my throat's so awful sore, and you ain't so sharp quite, as you are sometimes. Do you know what I'd do, if I was a boy?" "How should I know?" "Go to sea--get away from here, and grow up 'spectable. I wouldn't stop in Kent Street--I hate Kent Street--I'd walk into the country--oh! ever so far--until I came to the sea, and then I'd find a ship and turn sailor." "Lookee here, you young drab," cried the stay-lace woman, suddenly opening her eyes, and shrieking out in a shrill falsetto, "I'll turn out and skin you, if you can't keep that tongue still. What am I here for?--what did I pay tuppence for?--isn't that cussed coughing baby enough row at a time?" "If you've got anythink to say aginst my baby," said a husky voice in the next bed, "say it out to his mother, and mind your cat's head while you say it, you disagreeable baggage!" "Well, the likes of that!" "And the likes of you, for that matter--don't give me any more of your sarse, or I'll----" A tapping on the door with a stick diverted the general attention. "Who's there?" "Only me, Mrs. Watts." "Oh! _only_ you," was the response; "come in, will yer? I've no need to lock myself in, while I hide the swag away. _Now_, what's the matter?" The door was opened, and enter a policeman, a man in private clothes, with a billycock hat and a walking-stick, accompanied by a pale-faced, long-haired youth, of fourteen years of age.