Betsy did not wait for a second bidding. She preferred going for besoms, or for anything else, to her mother's kitchen and her mother's scolding. Her coming back was another affair; she would be just as likely to propel the besom into the kitchen and make off herself, as to enter. She suddenly stopped now, door in hand, to relate some news. "I say, mother, there's going to be a party at the Alhambra tea-gardens." "A party at the Alhambra tea-gardens, with frost and snow on the ground!" ironically repeated Mrs. Carter. "Be off, and don't be an oaf." "It's true," said Betsy. "All Honey Fair's going to it. I shall go too. 'Melia and Mary Ann Cross is going to have new things for it, and----" "Will you go along and get that besom?" cried angry Mrs. Carter. "No child of mine shall go off to their Alhambras, catching their death on the wet grass." "Wet grass!" echoed Betsy. "Why, you're never such a gaby as to think they'd have a party on the grass! It is to be in the big room, and there's to be a fiddle and a tam----" "----bourine" never came. Mrs. Carter sent the wet mop flying after Miss Betsy, and the young lady, dexterously evading it, flung-to the door and departed. A couple of hours later, Timothy Carter was escorted home, his own walking none of the steadiest. The men with him had taken more than Timothy; but it was that weak man's misfortune to be overcome by a little. You will allow, however, that he had taken enough, having spent his shilling and gone into debt besides. Mrs. Carter received him----Well, I am rather at a loss to describe it. She did not actually beat him, but her shrill voice might be heard all over Honey Fair, lavishing hard names upon helpless Tim. First of all, she turned out his pockets. The shilling was all gone. "And how much more tacked on to it?" asked she, wise by experience. And Timothy was just able to understand and answer. He felt himself as a lamb in the fangs of a wolf. "Eightpence halfpenny." "A shilling and eightpence halfpenny chucked away in drink in one night!" repeated Mrs. Carter. She gave him a short, emphatic shake, and propelled him up the stairs; leaving him without a light, to get to bed as he could. She had still some hours' work downstairs, in the shape of mending clothes. But it never once occurred to Mrs. Carter that she had herself to thank for his misdoings. With a tidy room and a cheerful fire to receive him, on returning from his day's work, Timothy Carter would no more have thought of the public-houses than you or I should. And if, as did Charlotte East, she had welcomed him with a good supper and a pleasant tongue, poor Tim in his gratitude had forsworn public-houses for ever.