There are actions and events in its life over which decent Poverty often chooses to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We can all, if we are minded, peer through this poor flimsy screen: often there is no shame behind it:--only empty platters, poor scraps, and other threadbare evidence of want and cold. And who is called on to show his rags to the public, and cry out his hunger in the street? At this time (her character has developed itself not so amiably since), Mrs. Prior was outwardly respectable; and yet, as I have said, my groceries were consumed with remarkable rapidity; my wine and brandy bottles were all leaky, until they were excluded from air under a patent lock;--my Morel’s raspberry jam, of which I was passionately fond, if exposed on the table for a few hours, was always eaten by the cat, or that wonderful little wretch of a maid-of-all-work, so active, yet so patient, so kind, so dirty, so obliging. Was it _the maid_ who took those groceries? I have seen the _Gazza Ladra_, and know that poor little maids are sometimes wrongfully accused; and besides, in my particular case, I own I don’t care who the culprit was. At the year’s end, a single man is not much poorer for this house-tax which he pays. One Sunday evening, being confined with a cold, and partaking of that mutton broth which Elizabeth made so well, and which she brought me, I entreated her to bring from the cupboard, of which I gave her the key, a certain brandy-bottle. She saw my face when I looked at her: there was no mistaking its agony. There was scarce any brandy left: it had all leaked away: and it was Sunday, and no good brandy was to be bought that evening. Elizabeth, I say, saw my grief. She put down the bottle, and she cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she fairly burst into tears. “My dear--dear child,” says I, seizing her hand, “you don’t suppose I fancy you----” “No--no!” she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. “No--no! but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last ’ad some. Oh! do have a patting lock!” “A patent lock, my dear?” I remarked. “How odd that you, who have learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough.” “She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner’s girl, as I was, and then among those noisy girls at that--oh! that _place_!” cries Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand. Here the bells of St. Beak’s began to ring quite cheerily for evening service. I heard “Elizabeth!” cried out from lower regions by Mrs. Prior’s cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as well without the brandy-and-water.