"'Tain't a tune, Mo. It's _scales_. She's being learned how. One day soon she'll have a tune to play. An easy tune. Mrs. Prichard says _she_ could play several tunes before she was that girl's age. Then she hadn't no brother to werrit her. I lay that made a difference." Aunt M'riar went on to mention other atrocities ascribed by Mrs. Burr to the freckly brother. His behaviour to his musical sister had, indeed, been a matter of serious concern to the upstairs tenants, whose window looked directly upon the back of Mrs. Druitt's, who took in lodgers in the main street where Dave had met with his accident. The boy Michael was suffering from enforced leisure on the day of this occurrence, as his father's cart had met with an accident, and was under repair. Its owner had gone to claim compensation personally from the butcher whose representative had ridden him down; not, he alleged, by misadventure, but from a deep-rooted malignity against all poor but honest men struggling for a livelihood. No butcher, observe, answers this description. Butchers are a class apart, whose motives are extortion, grease, and blood. They wallow in the last with joy, and practise the first with impunity. If they can get a chance to run over you, they'll do it! Trust them for that! Nevertheless, so hopeless would this butcher's case be if his victim went to a lawyer, that it was worth having a try at it afore he done that--so Mr. Rackstraw put it, later. Therefore, he had this afternoon gone to High Street, Clapham, to apply for seven pun' thirteen, and not take a penny less. Hence his son's ability to give attention to local matters, and a temporary respite to his donkey's labours in a paddock at Notting Hill. As for Dave, and for that matter the freckly boy, it was not term-time with them, for some reason. Dave was certainly at home, and was bidden to pay a visit to Mrs. Prichard in the course of the afternoon, if those lady-friends of his whom he met in the street yesterday did not come to pay _him_ a visit. It was not very likely they would, but you never could tell. Not to place reliance! Uncle Mo kept looking at his watch, and saying that if this here lady meant to turn up, she had better look alive. Being reproved for impatience by Aunt M'riar, he said very good, then--he'd stop on to the hour. Only it was no use runnin' through the day like this, and nothing coming of it, as you might say. This was only the way he preferred of expressing impatience for the visit. It is a very common one, and has the advantages of concealing that impatience, putting whomsoever one expects in the position of an importunate seeker of one's society, and suggesting that one is foregoing an appointment in the City to gratify him. Uncle Mo did unwisely to tie himself to the hour, as he became thereby pledged to depart, he having no particular wish to do so, and no object at all in view.