upstairs; but the knocking told her nothing of his loneliness. He was
just a good, hard-working, rather cross old man, unaccountably fond of
printed matter, whom she liked to be good to, and if in her time that
knocking upstairs should stop for ever--well! she wasn't one to meet
trouble half way, but she would miss it a good deal, old man as he was.

She was herself nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her
elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same
vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem
younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were
still a child, a wilful child.

"Eh, Matilda," he said, "you're just a child. No more nor less,--just a
child. The years haven't tamed you one bit--"

"Get out with you and your old stars!" she said, laughing. "Henry, come
along and have a talk with your old aunt."

Though invincibly cheerful through it all, Aunt Tipping was always in
trouble, if not for herself, for somebody else. To-day, it was for
herself, though it was but a minor reverse in the guerilla warfare of
her life. A distressed lodger who had just left had begged her to
accept, in lieu of rent, the pawn-ticket of a handsome clock which had
been hers in happier days; and Mrs. Tipping, moved as she always was by
any tale of woe, however elaborate, had consented. Nor in her world was
such a way of settling accounts very exceptional, for pawn-tickets were
there looked upon as legitimately negotiable securities. Indeed, Aunt
Tipping was seldom without a selection of such securities upon her
hands; and, if a neighbour should chance to be in need, say, of a new
set of chimney ornaments, as likely as not Aunt Tipping had in her purse