They would come—those tears—in spite of her resolve to be a good girl and not mind parting with the jug, which seemed like a part of her little life, for she could not remember the time when she had not loved to look at the pictures upon it, and hear her mother tell stories about the pretty cows and prettier milkmaids. The child looked very different from the children Griffin was accustomed to see playing in the lane. Her face was small and pretty, though the sad, anxious look it now wore was not such, happily, as is often seen on children's faces. Her dress was threadbare, but perfectly clean and neat, and there was a delicacy and refinement in her bearing only rendered the more striking by her shabby clothing. John Griffin noted all this as he looked upon her, and the child's unusual demeanour made him uncomfortable, for it seemed to him that her large dark eyes had power to read his thoughts, and she divined that he was taking an unfair advantage of her mother's ignorance. Griffin had a strange sense of being found out as he looked away from the child. Yet he had never before thought it wrong to drive as good a bargain as he could. Since he began his trade it had been his endeavour to buy as cheaply as possible, in order to sell again at the highest price. It was absurd that this child's open, innocent gaze should make him feel as if he had done a mean action. "Come, Maggie," said the child's mother, giving her the bag, "we must be going." But as she turned to go, a violent fit of coughing seized the poor woman. So severe was the attack, that she staggered back against the wall of the passage, faint and panting for breath. "Oh, mamma," cried little Maggie, running to her, and taking her hand; then turning to the dealer, she fixed on him a distressed, beseeching glance. "I'll get you some water; it's dreadful, a cough like that," said old Griffin, with an alacrity strange to him where china was not concerned. "No, thank you; I am better now," said the widow, slowly recovering breath; "it's nothing, I'm used to it." "Poor mamma is so ill," said Maggie, addressing the old man with the easy confidence of childhood; "and she has eaten nothing to-day." "Hush, Maggie!" interrupted her mother, in a sharp, quick tone. "Come along. Good night." As she spoke she passed out into the cold, dark night. A delicate woman should not have been abroad on such a night. The keen wind which blew in at the open door made even old Griffin shiver. "Who ever was that coughing so?" asked his wife, looking out of the inner room as he closed the door. "A poor lady that came to sell some china," he replied. "She must be very ill. I can't bear to hear a cough like that; it's what I call a churchyard cough," remarked Mrs. Griffin. "Did you buy any of the china?" "Yes, I did; and a nice bit I've got too," returned her husband. "What is it?" asked his wife, coming to the door of the shop.