Matthew Trent, an' Lambeth 'll never know another like him. He was
made o' music! When did you hear any man with a tenor voice like
his? He made songs, too, Mr. Ackroyd--words, music, an' all. Why,
Thyrza sings one of 'em still.'

'But how does she remember it?' Ackroyd asked with much interest.
'He died when she was a baby.'

'Yes, yes, she don't remember it of her father. It was me as taught
her it, to be sure, as I did most o' the other songs she knows.'

'But she wasn't a baby either,' put in Mrs. Bower. 'She was four
years; an' Lydia was four years older.'

'Four years an' two months,' said Mr. Boddy, nodding with a laugh.
'Let's be ac'rate, Mrs. Bower, ma'am. Thirteen year ago next
fourteenth o' December, Mr. Ackroyd. There's a deal happened since
then. On that day I had my shop in the Cut, and I had two legs like
other mortals. Things wasn't doing so bad with me. Why, it's like
yesterday to remember. My wife she come a-runnin' into the shop just
before dinner-time. "There's a boiler busted at Walton's," she says,
"an' they say as Mr. Trent's killed." It was Walton's, the
pump-maker's, in Ground Street.'

'It's Simpson & Thomas's now,' remarked Mrs. Bower. 'Why, where Jim
Candle works, you know, Mr. Hackroyd.'

Luke nodded, knowing the circumstance. The whole story was familiar
to him, indeed; but Mr. Boddy talked on in an old man's way for
pleasure in the past.