There also was his old mirror--he spoke of it--looking homely over the mantelpiece; and I heard of a few pictures saved, which Jack had taken out of their frames, to clean the glass, and had put back again. It seemed to be comforting to the old man to have these relics of his married life still about him; and in the midst of them he himself looked very comfortable; for, as his back was to the light (he sat in a Windsor chair with arms), I could not see the flush on his face. So pleasant was it to find him at last beside a clean hearth, warm and tidy and well cared-for, that I could not refrain from congratulating him. Yes, he acknowledged his good fortune; he was swift to praise his niece. "She looks after me," he said warmly, "as well as if I was a child. I en't bin so comfortable since I dunno when." Perhaps never before in his life. "Before I was bad myself, there was the poor old gal. I went through something with she. When I was away at work, I was always wonderin' about her." I had two shillings to hand over to him--the price obtained from his landlord for the cabbages left in the cottage garden; and in answer to inquiries as to his finances, he said that he had enough money to keep him going for a fortnight or so. But he was paying Jack for his board and lodging, and seemed fully alive to the desirability of continuing to do so. On Sunday morning there had come to see him his sister-in-law from Middlesham, to whom he complained of a brother-in-law's indifference. The complaints were reiterated to me. "Dick en't never bin near so much as to ask how I was gettin' on. I _told_ her he never come even to his poor old sister, till the night afore the funeral. And after all I've done for 'n, whenever he was in any trouble or wanted help hisself, I was always the fust one he sent for, if there was anything the matter with he, same as that time when he fell off the hayrick. Sent for me in the middle o' the night to go to the doctor's for 'n, when he'd got one of his own gals at home. It hurts me now, when I thinks of it sittin' here.... If he'd only jest come and say How do! But no...." We supposed that Dick feared lest he should be asked to give help in some way. Pleurisy and pneumonia or not--it was hard to believe that he had suffered from either, yet he had got hold of the words somehow-- Bettesworth was at no loss that afternoon for interesting subjects of conversation. An inquiry how his sister-in-law was faring led to a talk about her two sons, of whom one is out of work. The other, a basket-maker (blind or crippled, I do not know which) lives at home, and has just got a lot of work come in. "Mostly stock work," Bettesworth believed, "for some London firm he knows of." But besides this, he has a hundred stone jars from the brewery, to re-case with basket-work. The handles and bottoms are of cane, the rest "only skeleton work, as they calls it." Bettesworth always loved to know of technical things like this.