She looked at him with a curious defiance, her lip twitching. 'Oh, we know all about that!' said Daddy, impatiently, adding in a mincing voice, '"I will not love; if I do hang me; i' faith I will not." No, my pretty dear, not till the "wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy" comes this road--oh, no, not till next time! Quite so.' She let him rail, and said nothing. She sat down to her work; he faced round upon her suddenly, and said, frowning: 'What do you mean by it, eh? You're as good-looking as anybody!' 'Well, I want you to think it, father,' she said, affectionately, raising her eyes to his. A mother must have seen the shrinking sadness beneath the smile. What Daddy saw was simply a rounded girlish face, with soft cheeks and lips which seemed to him made for kissing; nothing to set the Thames on fire, perhaps, but why should she run herself down? It annoyed him, touched his vanity. 'Oh, I dare say!' he said to her, roughly, with an affected brutality. 'But you'll be precious disappointed if some one else doesn't think so too. Don't tell me!' She bent over her frame without speaking. But her heart filled with bitterness, and a kind of revolt against her life. Meanwhile her conscience accused her about Lucy. Lucy must have got herself into trouble at home, that she was sure of. And it was unlike her to keep it to herself--not to come and complain. Some days--a week--passed. But Dora dared not venture herself into her uncle's house after Daddy's escapade, and she was, besides, much pressed with her work. A whole set of altar furniture for a new church at Blackburn had to be finished by a given day. The affairs of the Parlour troubled her, and she got up long before it was light to keep the books in order and to plan for the day. Daddy had no head for figures, and he seemed to her to be growing careless about expenses. Her timid, over-anxious mind conjured up the vision of a slowly rising tide of debt, and it haunted her all day. When she went to her frame she was already tired out, and yet there she sat over it hour after hour. Daddy was blind. But Sarah, the stout cook, who worshipped her, knew well enough that she was growing thin and white. 'If yo doan't draw in yo'll jest do yoursel a mischief,' she said to her, angrily. 'Yo're nowt but a midge onyways, and a body 'll soon be able to see through yo.' 'I shall be all right, Sarah,' Dora would say. 'Aye, we'st aw on us be aw reet in our coffins,' returned the irate Sarah. Then, melting into affection, 'Neaw, honey, be raysonable, an' I'st just run round t' corner, an' cook you up a bit o' meat for your supper. Yo git no strength eawt i' them messin things yo eat. Theer's nowt but wind in em.'