In the sunken basement a tripe-boiler had a number of stone troughs or cisterns, for keeping his commodities cool for sale. The three rooms of Simon Clegg were situated immediately above these, two small bed-rooms overlooking the river and pleasant green fields beyond; the wide kitchen window having no broader range of prospect than the dreary and not too savoury yard. Even this view was shut out by a batting frame, resembling much a long, narrow French bedstead, all the more that on it was laid a thick bed of raw (that is, undressed) cotton, freckled with seeds and fine bits of husky pod. Bess was a batter, and her business was to turn and beat the clotted mass with stout lithe arms and willow-wands, until the fibres loosened, the seeds and specks fell through, and a billowy mass of whitish down lay before her. It was not a healthy occupation: dust and flue released found their way into the lungs, as well as on to the floor and furniture; and a rosy-cheeked batter was a myth. Machinery does the work now—but this history deals with _then_! During the week dust lay thick on everything; even Bessy’s hair was fluffy as a bursting cotton pod, in spite of the kerchief tied across it; but on the Saturday, when she had carried her work to Simpson’s factory in Miller’s Lane, and came back with her wages, broom and duster cleared away the film; wax and brush polished up the oak bureau, the pride and glory of their kitchen; the two slim iron candlesticks, fender and poker were burnished bright as steel; the three-legged round deal table was scrubbed white; and then, mounted on tall pattens, she set about with mop and pail, and a long-handled stone, to cleanse the flag floor from the week’s impurities. She had had a good mother, and, to the best of her ability, Bess tried to follow in her footsteps, and fill the vacant place on her father’s hearth, and in his heart. Her mother had been dead four years, and Bess, now close upon twenty, had since then lost two brothers, and lamented as lost one dearer than a brother—the two former by death, the other by the fierce demands of war. She had a pale, interesting face, with dark hair and thoughtful, deep grey eyes, and was, if anything, too quiet and staid for her years; but when her face lit up she had as pleasant a smile upon it as one would wish to see by one’s fireside, and not even her dialect could make her voice otherwise than low and gentle. Both her brothers had been considerably younger than herself; and possibly the fact of having stood _in loco parentis_ to them for upwards of two years had imparted to her the air of motherliness she possessed. Certain it is that if a child in the yard scalded itself, or cut a finger, or knocked the bark off an angular limb, it went crying to Bessy Clegg in preference to its own mother; and she healed bruises and quarrels with the same balsam—loving sympathy. She was just the one to open her arms and heart to a poor motherless babe, and Simon Clegg knew it.