"I'll be glad of it now," answered Billy, who had it in his pocket; "an' I've got it. You ain't a dyin' sort, _you_ ain't; an' if you was, the parish 'ud soon tuck _you_ up. P'raps you'll be straighter about money after this." "Let me 'ave _some_, then,--you can't want it all. Give me some, an' then 'ave the money for the things. There's ten dozen and seven, and you can take 'em yerself if ye like." "Wot--in this 'ere rain? Not me! I bet I'd 'ave the money if I wanted it without that. 'Ere--change these 'ere fardens at the draper's wen you go out: there's two bob's worth an' a penn'orth; I don't want to bust my pockets wi' them." While they spoke Lizer had come in from the back room. But she said nothing: she rather busied herself with a child she had in her arms. When Billy's mother, despondent and tearful, had tramped out into the rain with a pile of clothes in an oilcloth wrapper, she said sulkily, without looking up, "You might 'a' let 'er kep' that; you git all you want." At another time this remonstrance would have provoked active hostilities; but now, with the money about him, Billy was complacently disposed. "You shutcher 'ead," he said, "I got this, any'ow. She can make it up out o' my rent if she likes." This last remark was a joke, and he chuckled as he made it. For Billy's rent was a simple fiction, devised, on the suggestion of a smart canvasser, to give him a parliamentary vote. That night Billy and Lizer slept, as usual, in the bed in the back room, where the two younger children also were. Billy's mother made a bedstead nightly with three chairs and an old trunk in the front room by the mangle, and the eldest child lay in a floor-bed near her. Early in the morning Lizer awoke at a sudden outcry of the little creature. He clawed at the handle till he opened the door, and came staggering and tumbling into the room with screams of terror. "Wring 'is blasted neck," his father grunted sleepily. "Wot's the kid 'owlin' for?" "I's 'f'aid o' g'anny--I's 'f'aid o' g'anny!" was all the child could say; and when he had said it, he fell to screaming once more. Lizer rose and went to the next room; and straightway came a scream from her also. "O--O--Billy! Billy! O my Gawd! Billy, come 'ere!" And Billy, fully startled, followed in Lizer's wake. He blundered in, rubbing his eyes, and saw. Stark on her back in the huddled bed of old wrappers and shawls lay his mother. The outline of her poor face--strained in an upward stare of painful surprise--stood sharp and meagre against the black of the grate beyond. But the muddy old skin was white, and looked cleaner than its wont, and many of the wrinkles were gone. Billy Chope, half-way across the floor, recoiled from the corpse, and glared at it pallidly from the doorway. "Good Gawd!" he croaked faintly, "is she dead?"