The sitting-room, with supper nicely laid, with Bessie nicely dressed, fair and plump and attractive in the gas light, happily chatting to Mr. Gibbon, looked a Paradise of Rest in the eyes of poor wearied Mrs. Day. The room was in fact a very pleasant one; long, low, with broad seats before each of the three windows looking into the street; with a tall and narrow oak mantelpiece opposite the three windows; with panelled oak walls, heavy oak rafters, supporting the low ceiling, old brass finger plates high up on the oaken door--all as in the days when old Jonas Carr's grandfather first kept shop in Bridge Street. It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass birdcage holding a canary was hung. Bessie was carrying on an animated but evidently confidential conversation with the boarder, as mother and daughter came into the room. "He was riding past again to-day," she was saying. "I took care that he should not have the pleasure of thinking I was looking out for him; but peeping behind the curtains I could see him gazing up at the window. What consolation the poor thing finds in just looking at a window I'm sure I don't know." "He sees you there, Miss Bessie. Or hopes to see you." "You can't see me from the street." "From the opposite pavement you can. I know, because I have seen Miss Deleah sitting there; with her book, and the bird, and the flowers." Bessie's attention was caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah appeared with her mother. "Mama! When Deda sits on the window-seat in the corner she can be seen from the street!" "Well, my dear?" "Well, mama! You don't wish Deda to make herself conspicuous, I suppose?" "Who says I make myself conspicuous?" an ireful Deleah demands. "Who has been saying anything about me?" "I," the Manchester man hurriedly admits. "I did not say you were conspicuous, Miss Deleah. I only said I had seen you sitting there with your book--among the flowers." "She is not to sit there again, mama. Will you please say so? Deda, you are not to sit in the window again. We can't help living above a grocer's shop, but we need not make a display of ourselves." "If it offends Mr. Gibbon he does not need to look at the window. I shall certainly sit there if I wish." "Come, come, my dears. There is enough about it. Pray let us have supper in peace." "You've had a tiring day, ma'am," says Mr. Gibbon. "Let me persuade you to have a glass of ale with your beef, to-night. Just to revive you. Forcus's Family Ale is the finest pick-me-up."