Listening to her, it was difficult, as she herself would frankly admit, to imagine her the once “arch Miss Lucretia Barry;” looking at her, to remember there had been an evening when she had been “the cynosure of every eye.” One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased, thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had woven round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed little woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly on the nearest chair and at once commence a history of her troubles. Quite unconscious of this failing, it was an idea of hers that she was an exceptionally cheerful person. “But there, fretting's no good. We must grin and bear things in this world,” she would conclude, wiping her eyes upon her apron. “It's better to laugh than to cry, I always say.” And to prove that this was no mere idle sentiment, she would laugh then and there upon the spot. Much stair-climbing had bestowed upon her a shortness of breath, which no amount of panting in her resting moments was able to make good. “You don't know 'ow to breathe,” explained our second floor front to her on one occasion, a kindly young man; “you don't swallow it, you only gargle with it. Take a good draught and shut your mouth; don't be frightened of it; don't let it out again till it's done something: that's what it's 'ere for.” He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to assist her; but it was of no use. “There don't seem any room for it inside me,” she explained. Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening for them. Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for interruptions. A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present from a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side, she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out face would lighten at the suggestion. “Ah, well,” she would reply, “I don't mind if I do. It's a poor heart that never rejoices.”