"Yes, Tottie Bones; she is obliged to stay at nights with me just now, owing to her mother, poor thing, being under the necessity of shutting up her house while she goes to look after a drunken husband, who has forsaken her." "Hah!" exclaimed Miss Stivergill, giving a nervous pull at her left glove, which produced a wide rent between the wrist and the thumb. "I wonder why women marry!" "Don't you think it's a sort of--of--unavoidable necessity?" suggested Miss Lillycrop, with a faint smile. "Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have avoided it. So have you. If I had my way, I'd put a stop to marriage altogether, and bring this miserable world to an abrupt close.--But little Bones is no difficulty: we'll take her along with us." "But, dear Maria--" "Well, what further objections, Lilly?" "Tottie has charge of a baby, and--" "What! one baby in charge of another?" "Indeed it is too true; and, you know, you couldn't stand a baby." "Couldn't I?" said Miss Stivergill sharply. "How d'you know that? Let me see it." Tottie being summoned with the baby, entered the room staggering with the rotund mountain of good-natured self-will entirely concealing her person, with exception of her feet and the pretty little coal-dusted arms with which she clasped it to her heaving breast. "Ha! I suppose little Bones is behind it," said Miss Stivergill.--"Set the baby down, child, and let me see you." Tottie obeyed. The baby, true to his principles, refused to stand. He sat down and stared at those around him in jovial defiance. "What is your age, little Bones?" "Just turned six, m'm," replied Tottie, with a courtesy, which Miss Lillycrop had taught her with great pains. "You're sixty-six, at the least, compared with male creatures of the same age," observed her interrogator. "Thank you, m'm," replied Tottie, with another dip. "Have you a bonnet and shawl, little Bones?" Tottie, in a state of considerable surprise, replied that she had. "Go and put 'em on then, and get that thing also ready to go out." Miss Stivergill pointed to the baby contemptuously, as it were, with her nose. "He's a very good bybie"--so the child pronounced it--"on'y rather self-willed at times, m'm," said Tottie, going through the athletic feat of lifting her charge. "Just so. True to your woman's nature. Always ready to apologise for the male monster that tyrannises over you. I suppose, now, you'd say that your drunken father was a good man?" Miss Stivergill repented of the speech instantly on seeing the tears start into Tottie's large eyes as she replied quickly--"Indeed I would, m'm. Oh! you've no notion 'ow kind father is w'en 'e's not in liquor." "There, there. Of course he is. I didn't mean to say he wasn't, little Bones. It's a curious fact that many drun--, I mean people given to drink, _are_ kind and amiable. It's a disease. Go now, and get your things on, and do you likewise, Lilly. My cab is at the door. Be quick."