request for a pennyworth with more alacrity than she had shown in
selling six-pennyworths in her younger days. When the soi-disant widow
had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for the rich concoction
of the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind the fire, and
looking up slily, whispered, "Just a thought o' rum in it?--smuggled,
you know--say two penn'orth--'twill make it slip down like cordial!"

Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and
shook her head with a meaning the old woman was far from translating.
She pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon
offered, and as she did so said blandly to the hag, "You've seen better
days?"

"Ah, ma'am--well ye may say it!" responded the old woman, opening the
sluices of her heart forthwith. "I've stood in this fair-ground, maid,
wife, and widow, these nine-and-thirty years, and in that time have
known what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the
land! Ma'am you'd hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great
pavilion-tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come,
nobody could go, without having a dish of Mrs. Goodenough's furmity.
I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy gent's taste; I knew the town's
taste, the country's taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse
shameless females. But Lord's my life--the world's no memory;
straightforward dealings don't bring profit--'tis the sly and the
underhand that get on in these times!"

Mrs. Newson glanced round--her daughter was still bending over the
distant stalls. "Can you call to mind," she said cautiously to the old
woman, "the sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years
ago to-day?"