quite a job to get it open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't neither."
Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton, and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their business.
"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming in the shop and being perlite to ladies."
"You're very polite to me," she said.
"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady—leastways, I'm sure you are in your 'art—but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"
"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."
It piqued her that he should not have seen that she was a lady—and yet it pleased her too. It was a tribute to her power of adapting herself to her environment.
The cart rattled gaily on—he talked with more and more confidence; she with a more and more pleased consciousness of her perfect tact. As they went a beautiful idea came to
