Mike’s mother essayed matrimony a second time. She selected as a partner in this experiment a shiftless, idle, easy creature named David Lacy, who would have been a plasterer had not his indolence defeated his craft. Little Mollie, and Davy of the clattering crutch, occurred as a kind of penalty of the nuptials. Three years and a half before we encounter this mixed household, Lacy, the worthless, sailed away on a China ship without notice or farewell. Some say he was “shanghaied,” and some that he went of free will. Mrs. Lacy adopted the former of the two theories. “David Lacy, too idle to work ashore, assuredly would not go to sea where work and fare are tenfold harder.” Thus argued Mrs. Lacy. Still, a solution of Lacy’s reasons for becoming a mariner late in life is not here important. He sailed and he never returned; and as Mrs. Lacy perished of pneumonia the following winter, they both may be permitted to quit this chronicle to be meddled with by us no further. Mike Menares had witnessed fifteen years when his mother died. As suggested, he is a singularly handsome boy, and of an appearance likely to impress. From his Conemara mother, he received a yellow head of hair. Underneath are a pair of jet black brows, a hawkish nose, double rows of strong white teeth, and deep soft black eyes, as honest as a hound’s, the plain bestowal of his Jewish father. Mike was driving a delivery wagon for the great grocers, Mark & Milford, when his mother died. This brought six dollars a week. After the sad going of his mother, Mike found a second situation where he might work evenings, and thereby add six further dollars to that stipend from Mark & Milford. This until the other day continued. On twelve dollars a week, and with little Mollie--a notable housekeeper--to manage for the Pitt Street tenement, the composite house of Menares and Lacy fared well.