"He'll get used to it," answered Nellie, grimly.

"How you do talk, Nellie!" said the other. "To hear you sometimes one
would think you hadn't any heart."

"I haven't any patience."

"That's true, my young gamecock!" exclaimed a somewhat discordant voice.
Nellie looked round, brightening suddenly.

A large slatternly woman stood in the back doorway, a woman who might
possibly have been a pretty girl once but whose passing charms had long
been utterly sponged out. A perceptible growth of hair lent a somewhat
repulsive appearance to a face which at best had a great deal of the
virago in it. Yet there was, in spite of her furrowed skin and faded eyes
and drab dress, an air of good-heartedness about her, made somewhat
ferocious by the muscularity of the arms that fell akimbo upon her great
hips, and by the strong teeth, white as those of a dog, that flashed
suddenly from between her colourless lips when she laughed.

"That's true, my young gamecock!" she shouted, in a deep voice, strangely
cracked. "And so you're at your old tricks again, are you? Talking
sedition I'll be bound. I've half a mind to turn informer and have the
law on you. The dear lamb!" she added, to the other woman.

"Good morning, Mrs. Macanany," said Nellie, laughing. "We haven't got yet
so that we can't say what we like, here."

"I'm not so sure about that. Wait till you hear what I came to tell you,
hearing from little Jimmy that you were at home and going to have a