“You don’t say!”

“But what’s become of Maggs’s?”

“Maggs’s left a week ago come Tuesday.  I know, because they used to buy their milk of me.  They were the first a’most, and the last was the Menagerie and Gavel’s Roundabouts. They packed up last night.  It must be a wearin’ life,” commented the shopwoman.  “But for my part I like the shows, and so I tell Damper—­that’s my ’usband.  They put a bit of colour into the place while they last, besides bein’ free-’anded with their money.  Light come light go, I reckon; but anyway, it’s different from cows.  So you suffered from complications, did you?”

“Internal,” Tilda assured her in a voice as hollow as she could make it.  “I must have spit up a quart of blood, first an’ last.  An’ the medicine I ‘ad to take!  You wouldn’ think it, but the colour was pale ’eliotrope.”

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Damper sympathetically—­“I wonder it stayed in the stomach.”

“It didn’.”

“Wouldn’ you fancy a glass o’ milk, now?”

“It’s very kind of you.”  Tilda put on her best manners.  “And ’ere’s ’ealth!” she added before sipping, when the milk was handed to her.

“And the dog—­wouldn’ ’e like something?”

“Well, since you mention it—­but it’s givin’ you a ’eap of trouble.  If you ’ave such a thing as a bun, it don’t matter ’ow stale.”

“I can do better ’n that.”  Mrs. Damper dived into the inner room, and re-emerged with a plateful of scraps.  “There’s always waste with children,” she explained, “and I got five.  You can’t think the load off one’s shoulders when they’re packed to school at nine o’clock.  And that, I dessay,” she wound up lucidly, “is what softened me t’ards you.  Do you go to school, now?”

“Never did,” answered Tilda, taking the plate and laying it before Godolphus, who fell-to voraciously.

“I ’d like to tell that to the attendance officer,” said Mrs. Damper in a wistful tone.  “But p’r’aps it might get you into trouble?”

“You ’re welcome.”

“He do give me a lot of worry; and it don’t make things easier Damper’s threatenin’ to knock his ‘ead off if ever he catches the man darkenin’ our door.  Never been to school, aven’t you?  I ’d like to tell ’im, and that, if there’s a law, it ought to be the same for all.  But all my children are ’ealthy, and that’s one consolation.”

“’Ealth’s the first thing in life,” agreed Tilda.  “So they’ve all cleared out?—­the shows, I mean.”

“Every one—­exceptin’ the Theayter.”

“Mortimer’s?” Tilda limped to the open door.  “But I don’t see him, neither.”

“Mortimer’s is up the spout.  First of all, there was trouble with the lodgings; and on top of that, last Monday, Mr. Hucks put the bailiffs in.  This mornin’ he sent half a dozen men, and they took the show to pieces and carried it off to Hucks’s yard, where I hear he means to sell it by public auction.”