"I say don't! You hurt. Here, cut up some o' that dacklum and warm it, and stick it on. Then one on 'em said he looked through the keyhole one day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me wild; and the more she cried and said she'd take me away the more they danced about, and called me body-snatcher." "How awful!" said Elizabeth, holding a strip of diachylon at the end of the scissors to warm at the fire. "But I got the old woman off at last for twopence, and soon as she'd gone I was coming home, and I met them four again, and they began at me once more." "Did they, though?" said Elizabeth. "Yes, and I pitched into 'em: and so would any one, I say. Why, it's enough to make the old woman fetch me away. I say, Liz, you don't want me to go, do you?" "Indeed, but I do, sir." "No, you don't. I say, Liz, I'm so precious hungry. Got anything to give a fellow?" "No. You took out two slices of bread and dripping to eat as you went." Bob nodded. "Why you never went and give them to that old woman, did you?" "Ah, your mother's been dead ten years," said Bob sententiously. "S'pose I did give it to her? It was mine, and I wasn't obliged to eat it, was I? Thankye, that'll do." Bob patted the plaister down on his knuckles, and had reached the kitchen door, when Elizabeth of the smudgy face called him by name, and, with as near an approach to a smile as she could display, showed him a piece of pudding on the cupboard shell. "And you said you wanted me to go," said Bob, with his mouth full, after a busy pause; "but I know'd you didn't mean it. I say, Liz, is that big gent with the rings and chains and shiny hat going to marry Miss Rich?" "I don't know," said Elizabeth, suddenly growing deeply interested. "Why?" "Because he's always coming to see the doctor, and whenever I let him in he asks me where Miss Rich is, and gives me something." "Lor!" "Yes, and he looks at her so." "Do he, now? And what does Miss Rich say?" "Oh, she only talks to him about its being fine or rainy, and as if she didn't want to stop in the room." "Then she is," said Elizabeth triumphantly. "Is? Is what?" "Going to marry him. That's the proper way to a lady to behave." "Oh!" said Bob shortly, and a curious frown came over his countenance. "I don't like him, somehow. I wish one didn't want money quite so bad." Bob went up-stairs, and the place being empty he shut himself up in the surgery, to indulge in a morbid taste for trying flavour or odour of everything in the place, and fortunately so far without fatal or even dangerous results.