"I say, Robert East, did you see anything of my husband?" "I saw him go into the Horned Ram." "Then I wish the Horned Ram was into him!" wrathfully retorted Mrs. Brumm. "He vowed faithfully he'd come home with his wages the first thing after leaving work. He knows I have not a thing in the place for to-morrow--and Dame Buffle looking out for her money. I have a good mind to go down to the Horned Ram, and be on to him!" Robert East offered no opinion upon this delicate point. He remembered the last time Mrs. Brumm had gone to the Horned Ram to be "on" to her husband, and what it had produced. A midnight quarrel that disturbed the slumbers of Honey Fair. "Who was along of him?" pursued she. "Three or four of them. Hubbard and Jones, I saw go in: and Adam Thorneycroft." A quick rising of the head, as if startled, and a faint accession of colour, told that one of those names had struck, perhaps unpleasantly, on the ear of Charlotte East. "Where are your own earnings?" she asked of Mrs. Brumm. "I have had to take them to Bankes's," was the rueful reply. "It's a good deal now, and they're in a regular tantrum this week, and wouldn't even wait till Monday. They threatened to tell Brumm, and it frightened me out of my seventeen senses. And now, for him to go into that dratted Horned Ram with his wages! and me without a pennypiece! It's not more for the necessaries I want to get in, than for the things that is in pawn. I can't iron nothing: the irons is there." Charlotte, busy still, turned round. "I would not put in irons, and such things, that I wanted to use." "I dare say you wouldn't!" tartly responded Mrs. Brumm. "One has to put in what one's got, and the things our husbands won't miss the sight of. It's fine to be you, Charlotte East, setting yourself up for a lady, and never putting your foot inside the pawn-shop, with your clean hands and your clean kitchen on a Saturday night, sitting down to a hot supper, while the rest of us is a-scrubbing!" Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. "If I tried to set myself up for a lady, I could not be one. I work as hard as anybody; only I get it done betimes." Mrs. Brumm sniffed--having no ready answer at hand. And at that moment Tom East, encased in black, peeped out of the brewhouse, where he had been sent by Charlotte to wash the dye off his hands. "Sakes alive!" uttered Mrs. Brumm, aghast at the sight. "Jacky's worse than me," responded Tom, rather proud of having to say so much. Robert explained to her how it had happened. "And our Jacky's as bad as that!" she cried. "Won't I wring it out of him!" "Nonsense," said Robert; "it was an accident. Boys will be boys." "Yes, they will: and it's not the men that have to wash for 'em and keep 'em clean!" retorted Mrs. Brumm, terribly wrathful. "And me at a standstill for my irons! And that beast of a Brumm stopping out." "I will lend you my irons," said Charlotte.