“How’s the baby?” asked Harriet looking towards a bundle of wrappers which lay on a sofa.

“I doubt it’s too good for this world,” returned the mother, grinning in a way which made her ugly face peculiarly revolting.  “Dessay it’ll join its little brother an’ sister before long.  Mike put it in the club yes’day.”

The burial-club, Mrs. Sprowl meant, and Harriet evidently understood the allusion.

“Have you walked?” went on the woman, doubling up her paper, and then throwing it aside.  “Dessay you could do with somethin’ to take the cold orff yer chest.—­Liz,” she called out to some one behind the bar, with which the parlour communicated by an open door; “two Irish!”

The liquor was brought.  Presently some one called to Mrs. Sprowl, who went out.  Leaning on the counter, in one of the compartments, was something which a philanthropist might perhaps have had the courage to claim as a human being; a very tall creature, with bent shoulders, and head seeming to grow straight out of its chest; thick, grizzled hair hiding almost every vestige of feature, with the exception of one dreadful red eye, its fellow being dead and sightless.  He had laid on the counter, with palms downward as if concealing something, two huge hairy paws.  Mrs. Sprowl seemed familiar with the appearance of this monster; she addressed him rather bad-temperedly, but otherwise much as she would have spoken to any other customer.

“No, you don’t, Slimy!  No, you don’t!  What you have in this house you pay for in coppers, so you know.  Next time I catch you tryin’ to ring the changes, I’ll have you run in, and then you’ll get a warm bath, which you wouldn’t partic’lar care for.”

The creature spoke, in hoarse, jumbled words, not easy to catch unless you listened closely.

“If you’ve any accusion to make agin me, Mrs. Sprowl, p’r’aps you’ll wait till you can prove it.  I want change for arf a suvrin:  ain’t that straight, now?”

“Straight or not, you won’t get no change over this counter, so there you’ve the straight tip.  Now sling yer ‘ook, Slimy, an’ get it somewhere else.”

“If you’ve any accusion to make—­”

“Hold yer noise!—­What’s he ordered, Liz?”

“Pot o’ old six,” answered the girl.

“Got sixpence, Slimy?”

“No, I ain’t, Mrs. Sprowl,” muttered the creature.  “I’ve got arf a suvrin.”

“Then go an’ get change for it.  Now, once more, sling yer ’ook.”

The man moved away, sending back a horrible glare from his one fiery eyeball.

Mrs. Sprowl re-entered the parlour.

“I wish you’d take me on as barmaid, Sarah,” Harriet said, when she had drunk her glass of spirits.

“Take you on?” exclaimed the other, with surprise.  “Why, have you fallen out with your cousin?  I thought you was goin’ to be married soon.”

“I didn’t say for sure that I was; I only said I might be.  Any way it won’t be just yet, and I’m tired of my place in the shop.”