unsympathetically asked: "Sister sick?"

"Oh, not very--jest a cold," she answered, as guiltily as if
Evelina's illness had been feigned. "We want a steak as usual,
please--and my sister said you was to be sure to give me jest as
good a cut as if it was her," she added with child-like candour.

"Oh, that's all right." The butcher picked up his weapon with
a grin. "Your sister knows a cut as well as any of us," he
remarked.

In another moment, Ann Eliza reflected, the steak would be cut
and wrapped up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointed
steps toward home. She was too shy to try to delay the butcher by
such conversational arts as she possessed, but the approach of a
deaf old lady in an antiquated bonnet and mantle gave her her
opportunity.

"Wait on her first, please," Ann Eliza whispered. "I ain't in
any hurry."

The butcher advanced to his new customer, and Ann Eliza,
palpitating in the back of the shop, saw that the old lady's
hesitations between liver and pork chops were likely to be
indefinitely prolonged. They were still unresolved when she was
interrupted by the entrance of a blowsy Irish girl with a basket on
her arm. The newcomer caused a momentary diversion, and when she
had departed the old lady, who was evidently as intolerant of
interruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on returning
to the beginning of her complicated order, and weighing anew, with