‘Ah! And who’d have thought you’d have grown up such a beauty! I say, Clem, how many of the young chaps about here have been wanting to marry you, eh?’ ‘A dozen or two, I dessay,’ Clem replied, shrugging her shoulders scornfully. Mr. Snowdon laughed, and then spat into the fire. ‘Tell me about some o’ them, will you? Who is it you’re keeping company with now?’ ‘Who, indeed? Why, there isn’t one I’d look at! Several of ’em’s took to drinking ’cause I won’t have nothing to do with ’em.’ This excited Mr. Snowdon’s mirth in a high degree; he rolled on his chair, and almost pitched backwards. ‘I suppose you give one or other a bit of encouragement now and then, just to make a fool of him, eh?’ ‘Course I do. There was Bob Hewett; he used to lodge here, but that was after your time. I kep’ him off an’ on till he couldn’t bear it no longer; then he went an’ married a common slut of a thing, just because he thought it ‘ud make me mad. Ha, ha! I believe he’d give her poison an’ risk it any day, if only I promised to marry him afterwards. Then there was a feller called Jeck Bartley. I set him an’ Bob fightin’ one Bank-holiday—you should a’ seen ’em go at it! Jack went an’ got married a year ago to a girl called Suke Jollop; her mother forced him. How I did laugh! Last Christmas Day they smashed up their ’ome an’ threw the bits out into the street. Jack got one of his eyes knocked out—I thought I should a’ died o’ laughin’ when I saw him next mornin’.’ The hearer became uproarious in merriment. ‘Tell you what it is, Clem,’ he cried, ‘you’re something like a girl! Darn me if I don’t like you! I say, I wonder what my daughter’s grown up? Like her mother, I suppose. You an’ she was sort of sisters, wasn’t you?’ He observed her closely. Clem laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Queer sort o’ sisters. She was a bit too quiet-like for me. There never was no fun in her.’ ‘Aye, like her mother. And where did you say she went to with the old man?’ ‘Where she went to?’ repeated Clem, regarding him steadily with her big eyes, ‘I never said nothing about it, ’cause I didn’t know.’ ‘Well, I shan’t cry about her, and I don’t suppose she misses me much, wherever she is. All the same, Clem, I’m a domesticated sort of man; you can see that, can’t you? I shouldn’t wonder if I marry again one of these first days. Just tell me where to find a girl of the right sort. I dare say you know heaps.’ ‘Dessay I do. What sort do you want?’ ‘Oh, a littlish girl—yellow hair, you know—one of them that look as if they didn’t weigh half-a-stone.’ ‘I’ll throw this parsnip at you, Mr. Snowdon!’ ‘What’s up now. You don’t call yourself littlish, do you?’ Clem snapped the small end off the vegetable she was paring, and aimed it at his head. He ducked just in time. Then there was an outburst of laughter from both. ‘Say, Clem, you haven’t got a glass of beer in the house?’