Think of the majesty of the English law which enables this pathetic yard of twisted womanhood to hold her own in a foul court against “a wicked woman” with arms like a bluejacket!  But Miss Stipps is used to fighting her own battles.  When children yell after her, “Old Goody Witch!” she swings about and takes her stick to them, pouring out such a flow of imprecation upon their young heads that they run away in a panic of alarm.  Moreover, I have it on reliable authority that when Miss Stipps steps over the way with her jug for a pint of porter, she is in the habit, after reaching up her arm to receive the jug back from the barman, of telling the young man pretty sharply that she isn’t buying froth, and that she’ll trouble him to do a blow at the jug and to give another pull to his tap, which won’t hurt him, it won’t, as he ain’t yet the proprietor of the place, and not likely to be, neither, if he treats poor ladies in sich a wulgar and Sheeny fashion.

I beg Miss Stipp to desist from her labour of dabbing the grate with streaky spots of black-lead, and implore her to take a seat and indulge herself for an easy hour in anecdotal reminiscences.  Miss Stipp yields to my blandishments—­that is to say, she backs against a little cobbler’s stool, a stool which the Baby Bear in that immortal legend of “The Three Bears” would have found several sizes too small for it, and appears to slope half an inch to the rear.  By the action of crossing her hands in her lap, and by the society smile on her face as she turns her dewy nose in my direction, I gather, though I should never have discovered it for myself, that Miss Stipp is seated.

We are now in for a thoroughly comfortable and intimate conversation.  The cat is fast asleep.  The spinster’s mantelpiece, which is decorated with pictorial advertisements of such highly inappropriate commodities as baby’s food and tobacco, wears an aspect which I am content to regard as social.  And the cupboard beside the fireplace, although the bottom floor is used as a coal-cellar, suggests, with its crowded shelves of dishes, egg-cups, plates, biscuit-boxes, and paper bags, that we are in for a little friendly banquet, which, if not good enough for his Grace of Canterbury, might yet have inspired him of Assisi to ask a blessing.

* * * * *

“Well, you must know,” says Miss Stipp, looking at the fire, and nodding her head as she speaks, “that I am one of ten, that I was born in Blackfriars—­born in Blackfriars, I was—­and that all the boys died, and that only me, who was born a cripple—­born a cripple, I was—­and my two sisters ever grew up to be a comfort to my poor mother.  What father was, if ever he was anythin’ at all, I don’t know; and if I ever did know I think it was somethin’ connected in some roundabout fashion, it was, with drains.  But he died early, and that was an end of him.  My poor mother, she was a laundress—­a beautiful laundress