such pains to secure. Can you fancy the bustle of Alice to make the
tea, to pour it out, and sweeten it to their liking, to help and
help again to clap-bread and bread and butter? Can you fancy the
delight with which she watched her piled-up clap-bread disappear
before the hungry girls and listened to the praises of her
home-remembered dainty?

"My mother used to send me some clap-bread by any north-country
person--bless her! She knew how good such things taste when far away
from home. Not but what every one likes it. When I was in service
my fellow-servants were always glad to share with me. Eh, it's a
long time ago, yon."

"Do tell us about it, Alice," said Margaret.

"Why, lass, there's nothing to tell. There was more mouths at home
than could be fed. Tom, that's Will's father (you don't know Will,
but he's a sailor to foreign parts), had come to Manchester, and
sent word what terrible lots of work was to be had, both for lads
and lasses. So father sent George first (you know George, well
enough, Mary), and then work was scarce out toward Burton, where we
lived, and father said I maun try and get a place. And George wrote
as how wages were far higher in Manchester than Milnthorpe or
Lancaster; and, lasses, I was young and thoughtless, and thought it
was a fine thing to go so far from home. So, one day, th' butcher
he brings us a letter fra George, to say he'd heard on a place--and
I was all agog to go, and father was pleased like; but mother said
little, and that little was very quiet. I've often thought she was
a bit hurt to see me so ready to go--God forgive me! But she packed
up my clothes, and some of the better end of her own as would fit