Bob removed the lid, drew out a roll of diachylon, and after cutting off a strip, he replaced the lid and scissors, and descended to the kitchen, where Elizabeth was peeling potatoes, and making the droning noise which she evidently believed to be a song. "Look ye here!" cried the boy, triumphantly showing his bleeding knuckles. Elizabeth uttered a faint cry. "Why, you've been fighting!" she cried. "Oh, you bad wicked boy!" "So are you," cried Bob tauntingly: "you'd fight if the chaps served you as they did me, and said what they did about the doctor." "What did they say?" said the girl, giving her nose a rub as if to make it more plastic. "You bathe them cuts nistely and put some sticking-plaister on, and I'll tell you." Elizabeth set down the potato basin, wiped her hands, and after filling a tin bowl full of cold water, and fetching a towel, she tenderly bathed the boy's dirty injured hands. "Now tell me what they said about the doctor," she said coaxingly. "Why, they gets saying things to try and get me took away. My old woman don't like me stopping." "She's a dreadful old creature," said Elizabeth angrily, "and I won't have her here." "So's your old woman a dreadful old creature," retorted Bob, "and I won't have her here." "My mother's been dead ten years," said Elizabeth, battling with an obstinate bit of mud, "and I won't have you speak to me in that impudent way." "Then you leave my poor old woman alone." "You let her stop away instead of always coming down them area-steps, and you encouraging her." "That I don't, so come now. She's my old woman and I'm very fond on her, but I wish she wouldn't come. She allus comes when I'm busy." "And she ought to be very glad you are here." "But she ain't. She says doctors are bad 'uns. And that they do all sorts o' things as they oughtn't to. She was in the orspittle once, and she said it was horrid, and if she hadn't made haste and got well they'd have 'sected her." "Lor!" said Elizabeth, drying the boy's hands with a series of gentle pats of the towel. "And she says she knows the doctor does them sort o' things on the sly, and that she shall take me away, and I don't want to go." "Well, that didn't make you fight, did it?" "Yes, it did, now. I was going to tell you, on'y you're in such a hurry, I went to take a letter for Miss Rich this morning, and as I was coming back, I meets mother, and she was asking me if I'd got any--" "Money?" said Elizabeth promptly. "Well, s'pose she did? If your mother warn't dead, and hadn't any money, p'raps if she met you in the street she'd ask you for money. Then how would you like it if four chaps come and said, `Hallo, Bottles, how many dead 'uns have you got in the dust-hole?'" "Lor! did they say that?" said Elizabeth, squeezing the boy's hand in the interest she took.