The seven intermediate children were called Sally, Phil, Dick, Tom, Janey, Bill, and Joe. Getting tired at last of quarrelling and touching mother's dead cheek, they clustered round Patty, to examine and admire the new baby. "'He's a queer 'un," said Dick, aged ten. "My h'eyes I look at 'is red 'air--he's a carrots, and no mistake." "No, he ain't," said Tom; "he's a reg'lar tip-topper, _I_ say." Tom's reason for this burst of admiration was in no way caused by his love for the baby, but from the desire, fostered by circumstances within him, to contradict and oppose Dick. Presently one child began to pinch the new baby's toes, and another to try and pull him out of Patty's arms. Patty, however, the motherly one of the family, sat firm. "Stop that!" she said, administering a slap with right good-will and sure aim all round; then, when the storm of sobs and shrieks which this proceeding had called forth died away-- "Wot'll we call 'im? Timbs is 'is surname, safe enough, but he must 'ave a chrissen name, same as h'all of us." "Mother used to give us our chrissen names," said little Janey in an awed voice, realising, for the first time as she spoke, that mother was really gone. "Call 'im anythink," said Phil roughly. "Tom'll do fine; no, we 'ave a Tom; and Joe--wy, that 'ere young 'un's Joe. My h'eyes and stars! there ain't any name left fur the new baby; wot a lark!" The children's imagination was not vivid, nor their vocabulary large; and the Joes, Toms, Dicks, and Phils being already used up, and held strenuously to by their owners, there seemed in truth no name left for the tenth baby. Phil proposed that either Tom or Joe should resign theirs in favour of the new-comer. Tom and Joe refused to comply, on which occasion fresh quarrelling ensued. "I have it," said Molly, clapping her hands: "there's the bird book." Yes; they possessed one book, and Molly could read. It was a book with coloured engravings of birds with gay plumage. Robin Red-breast graced the frontispiece. Need the children go any farther? The new baby was called Robin. CHAPTER II. _NO ONE CAN SAY THE "DOLPHIN" WAS NOT DOING ITS WORK WELL._ The father of all this family, and the widower of this dead woman, came in about ten o'clock, a good deal the worse for drink; but this being Timbs' normal condition, at least his condition whenever his children held intercourse with him, caused them now no surprise. The children knew that he would come home drunk, and also knew that, either drunk or sober, he would express no sorrow for mother; he had, as they roughly worded it, given her far more kicks than halfpence of late. Never did any of them, except Patty and Molly, remember father to have addressed a kind word to mother; for just about the time that the other children could begin to exercise their memories, Timbs had begun another practice,--a practice which took from mother all chance of loving words, and from them all hope of the comforts of life.