“Yes, indeed!  That craft has been taut rigged in her time.”

“Who can she be, Michael?  None of your common ones, of course?”

“Oh no, of course not; she’s ‘seen better days,’ as the slang phrase is.”

“No doubt of that.  What name did she give.”

“Lizzy Glenn.  But that may or may not be correct.  People likely her are sometimes apt to forget even their own names.”

“Where does she live?”

“In the lower part of the town somewhere.  I have it in the book here.”

“You think she’ll bring them shirts back?”

“Oh, yes.  Folks that have come down in the world as she has, rarely play grab-game after that fashion.”

“She seemed all struck aback at the price.”

“I suppose so.  Ha! ha!”

“But she’s the right kind,” resumed Berlaps.  “I only wish we had a dozen like her.”

“I wish we had.  Her work will never rip.”

Further conversation was prevented by the entrance of a customer.  Before he had been fully served, a middle-aged woman came in with a large bundle, and went back to Berlaps’s desk, where he stood engaged over his account-books.

“Good-day, Mrs. Gaston,” said he, looking up, while not a feature relaxed on his cold, rigid countenance.

“I’ve brought you in six pairs of pants,” said the woman, untying the bundle she had laid upon the counter.

“You had seven pair, ma’am.”

“I know that, Mr. Berlaps.  But only six are finished; and, as I want some money, I have brought them in.”

“It is more than a week since we gave them out.  You ought to have had the whole seven pair done.  We want them all now.  They should have been in day before yesterday.”

“They would have been finished, Mr. Berlaps,” said the woman, in a deprecating tone; “but one of my children has been sick; and I have had to be up with her so often every night, and have had to attend to her so much through the day, that I have not been able to do more than half work.”

“Confound the children!” muttered the tailor to himself, as he began inspecting the woman’s work.  “They’re always getting sick, or something else.”

After carefully examining three or four pairs of the coarse trowsers which had been brought in, he pushed the whole from him with a quick impatient gesture and an angry scowl, saying, as he did so—­

“Botched to death!  I can’t give you work unless it’s done better, Mrs. Gaston.  You grow worse and worse!”

“I know, sir,” replied the woman, in a troubled voice, “that they are not made quite so well as they might be.  But consider how much I have had against me.  A sick child—­and worn out by attendance on her night and day.”

“It’s always a sick child, or some other excuse, with the whole of you.  But that don’t answer me.  I want my work done well, and mean to have it so.  If you don’t choose to turn out good work, I can find a plenty who will.”