Inattentive to these murmurs, which she felt unreasonable, the bouncing Martha now quitted the room to repair to her "upper household" avocations. The man at the hearth was the only companion left to the widow. Gazing at her for a moment, as she sat whining, with a rude compassion in his eye, and slowly munching his toast, which he had now buttered and placed in a delf plate on the hob, this person thus soothingly began:-- "Ah, Dame Lobkins, if so be as 'ow little Paul vas a vith you, it would be a gallows comfort to you in your latter hend!" The name of Paul made the good woman incline her bead towards the speaker; a ray of consciousness shot through her bedulled brain. "Little Paul,--eh, sirs! where is Paul? Paul, I say, my ben cull. Alack! he's gone,--left his poor old nurse to die like a cat in a cellar. Oh, Dummie, never live to be old, man! They leaves us to oursel's, and then takes away all the lush with 'em! I has not a drop o' comfort in the 'varsal world!" Dummie, who at this moment had his own reasons for soothing the dame, and was anxious to make the most of the opportunity of a conversation as unwitnessed as the present, replied tenderly, and with a cunning likely to promote his end, reproached Paul bitterly for never having informed the dame of his whereabout and his proceedings. "But come, dame," he wound up, "come, I guess as how he is better nor all that, and that you need not beat your hold brains to think where he lies, or vot he's a doing. Blow me tight, Mother Lob,--I ax pardon, Mrs. Margery, I should say,--if I vould not give five bob, ay, and five to the tail o' that, to know what the poor lad is about; I takes a mortal hinterest in that 'ere chap!" "Oh! oh!" groaned the old woman, on whose palsied sense the astute inquiries of Dummie Dunnaker fell harmless; "my poor sinful carcass! what a way it be in!"