widow. Gazing at her for a moment, as she sat whining, with a rude
compassion in his eye, and slowly munching his toast, which he had now
buttered and placed in a delf plate on the hob, this person thus
soothingly began:--

"Ah, Dame Lobkins, if so be as 'ow little Paul vas a vith you, it would
be a gallows comfort to you in your latter hend!"

The name of Paul made the good woman incline her bead towards the
speaker; a ray of consciousness shot through her bedulled brain.

"Little Paul,--eh, sirs! where is Paul? Paul, I say, my ben cull.
Alack! he's gone,--left his poor old nurse to die like a cat in a
cellar. Oh, Dummie, never live to be old, man! They leaves us to
oursel's, and then takes away all the lush with 'em! I has not a drop o'
comfort in the 'varsal world!"

Dummie, who at this moment had his own reasons for soothing the dame, and
was anxious to make the most of the opportunity of a conversation as
unwitnessed as the present, replied tenderly, and with a cunning likely
to promote his end, reproached Paul bitterly for never having informed
the dame of his whereabout and his proceedings. "But come, dame," he
wound up, "come, I guess as how he is better nor all that, and that you
need not beat your hold brains to think where he lies, or vot he's a
doing. Blow me tight, Mother Lob,--I ax pardon, Mrs. Margery, I should
say,--if I vould not give five bob, ay, and five to the tail o' that, to
know what the poor lad is about; I takes a mortal hinterest in that 'ere
chap!"

"Oh! oh!" groaned the old woman, on whose palsied sense the astute