you mean!—­he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care—­I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself!—­and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born—­you are an old pig.  You are a brimstone pig.  You’re a head of swine!”

Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little charwoman’s evening meal.  In like manner she gets together, in the iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.

“But your father and me were partners, Bart,” says the old gentleman, “and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is.  It’s rare for you both that you went out early in life—­Judy to the flower business, and you to the law.  You won’t want to spend it.  You’ll get your living without it, and put more to it.  When I am gone, Judy will go back to the flower business and you’ll still stick to the law.”

One might infer from Judy’s appearance that her business rather lay with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making.  A close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her brother’s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone, some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some resentful opinion that it is time he went.

“Now, if everybody has done,” says Judy, completing her preparations, “I’ll have that girl in to her tea.  She would never leave off if she took it by herself in the kitchen.”

Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter.  In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the remotest periods.  Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.

“Now, don’t stare about you all the afternoon,” cries Judy, shaking her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, “but take your victuals and get back to your work.”

“Yes, miss,” says Charley.

“Don’t say yes,” returns Miss Smallweed, “for I know what you girls are.  Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you.”

Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to gormandize, which “in you girls,” she observes, is disgusting.  Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.