of woman, and it's likely the eldest girl took after her. A quieter
and modester girl than Eve there never was. Our Martha lived with
her aunt at Walsall--that's my only sister, and she was bed-rid,
poor thing, and had Martha to look after her. And when she died, and
Martha came back here to us, the Madeley family came here as well,
'cause the father got some kind of work. But he couldn't keep it,
and he went off I don't know where, and Eve had the children to keep
and look after. We used to do what we could to help her, but it was
a cruel life for a poor thing of her age--just when she ought to
have been enjoying her life, as you may say."

Hilliard's interest waxed.

"Then," pursued Mrs. Brewer, "the next sister to Eve, Laura her name
was, went to Birmingham, into a sweetstuff shop, and that was the
last ever seen or heard of her. She wasn't a girl to be depended
upon, and I never thought she'd come to good, and whether she's
alive or dead there's no knowing. Eve took it to heart, that she
did. And not six months after, the other girl had the 'sipelas, and
she died, and just as they was carrying her coffin out of the house,
who should come up but her father! He'd been away for nearly two
years, just sending a little money now and then, and he didn't even
know the girl had been ailing. And when he saw the coffin, it took
him so that he fell down just like a dead man. You wouldn't have
thought it, but there's no knowing what goes on in people's minds.
Well, if you'll believe it, from that day he was so changed we
didn't seem to know him. He turned quite religious, and went regular
to chapel, and has done ever since; and he wouldn't touch a drop of
anything, tempt him who might. It was a case of conversion, if ever
there was one.