me to talk: for as sure as I had said anything, he would have told me he meant to speak out his mind just the same, no matter what I thought. But as I didn't say anything, he had no particular call to say that either: so the clock ticked and neither of us spoke one word.

I always liked the ticking of that clock, with its big round pendulum, swinging to and fro in the wooden case with a glass front. It was such a strong, quiet, regular click, click, click, as if the clock knew its business, and meant to do it, and wouldn't be easily hindered. The clock was given me for a wed. ding present, when I was married, by my mistress, Mrs. Conner, after the years I had been in her service,-twelve years, neither more nor less, from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty-seven, first as schoolroom maid, then as under-nurse, and last as lady's-maid, and I never was in any other service.

My master's gift was a grand family Bible, heavy and purple-covered. It lay always on a little round table in a corner of our par lour, and I never let anybody dust it but myself; and on Sundays and holidays, when we sat in the parlour and had meals there instead of in the kitchen, we had prayers there too: so Philip read out of our big, beautiful Book.

The young

On each side of the clock there was a handsome vase, and they had been given me by the young ladies of the house when I left. How sorry I was to say good-bye to them all, to be sure! But still it wasn't a goodbye of the worst sort, though my home was to be no longer under the same roof: for Phil and I lived still in Little Sutton, and they often came to see me. ladies were married by this time, and wedding-cake had been sent me four times, and now there were grandchildren running about often in the house, as sweet as my own young ladies had been when I was there. We had two or three neat framed pictures hanging on the walls, and a little bookcase of three shelves nearly full of books, and a comfortable rocking-chair, and a pretty bright red table-cloth to smarten up the Phil and I took a real pride in having our parlour look nice. It was a cosy

room.

7

little cottage, with the kitchen at the back, behind the parlour, and three little bedrooms overhead. Phil and I slept in one, and the two boys in another, and we commonly had a lodger in the third. We made a little more that way; not that it was really needful, for Phil was a good workman, and he earned good wages, and he used to bring all his wages straight home to me, instead of leaving half in the pockets of the publicans by the way.

I always did say, and I always shall say, that there are not many men in England like my husband: and yet maybe there are more than I think. It isn't that he ever was so very particularly clever. He was a skilled workman, but not at all one of those men who make a stir wherever they go, and get everybody to admire them.

Of course it is a great thing to be clever. Phil always declared I was cleverer than him, because I could read fast and write easily, while he was one of the slowest readers I ever saw, and writing was a great bother to him. But then he always had so much sense. If I was cleverer than Philip, -and I don't know that I was, for all he said so, I know I never had half his sense. And if he didn't read fast, he thought over everything he read, and never forgot it after.

And Philip had such a straighforward way of looking things in the face. Truth was truth, and right was right, and wrong was wrong, and a lie was a lie, with my husband. He would never say black was white to please anybody, and he never could follow the doublings and shiftings and shilly. shallyings of some men. That wasn't always liked, maybe, and especially it wasn't always liked by the men when he became foreman, -but all the same he went straight ahead, and he was fifty times as much respected in the end for not giving in to what was wrong.

Little Sutton was not so small a village even in those days as its name would seem to make out. Our little row of cottagesPhilip's and mine in the middle, with old Gilpin's on one side of us, and Will Saunders' on the other side, and two more cottages beyond each, making seven in all--was in about the most countrified part of the whole place. Little Sutton had grown into quite a town

on the other side of the church, and there was such a deal of building going on that the masons had a pretty good time of it. My husband was a mason.

Besides being so true in his ways, my husband was very kind-hearted,— -as kind

hearted a man as ever I knew. He could not see a child tumble down in the road without stopping to pick it up and comfort it. And as for cuffing and knocking about his wife and his boys, like what-well, I needn't say which of the neighbours often did-I should just have thought he had gone out of his mind if I had seen him begin such ways. No; he was a good husband to me, and he always said I was a good wife to him. I hope so, I am sure, or it would be bitter work looking back now.

As I have just said, Philip earned good wages in those days, and we were gathering quite a nice sum in the savings bank. For it never was our plan to spend every penny we could earn on dress and food, and then expect the parish to support us, or gentlefolks to step in and keep us from the workhouse, when sickness or age or a slack season should stop work. No; Philip always said he didn't count that to be proper self-respect. If we did our best, and God took from us the means of getting along, then, he said, he would be grateful for help: but he had too much of honest pride to trust to that as long as he could provide for himself and for his,not only in fine weather, but on rainy days. Why, dear me, the bees and the ants and the dormice and the swallows show a deal more forethought than many a working-man and his wife show when they have good times and plenty of work. Of course I don't mean to say but there's many a one as wise as my husband, for there's seldom a rule without a lot of exceptions; still I do know that such are the exceptions, and not the rule.

Phil and I sat awhile as quiet as two mice: only I saw Phil looking up slyly at the clock, as if he was tired of waiting, and didn't much enjoy this sort of spending of his halfholiday. And presently I said to him in a cheerful sort of way, "What do you think of our new lodger, Phil ? "

"Don't know," says Philip gruffly.

and steady, I do think, and that's a com-' fort."

"He wouldn't stay here long if he wasn't, I can tell him," said Phil.

"I'm sure he is. And he seems so goodtempered, and not a bit fussy in his way. The boys take to him wonderful. I wonder where he comes from."

"No knowing where any of them young navvies come from," said Philip, rather crusty still. "Just regular birds of passage, all of 'em,-coming and going."

"Well, it's like to be a good two years' business, he says, in these parts, such a deal of tunnelling, and a bridge, and a viaduct, and I don't know what all. But I'm glad you are not a navvy, Phil. It's nice to have a settled home."

"Settled as long as there's work to be had," said Phil.

"Building in Little Sutton isn't like to get less, now we're to have the railway brought to our doors," I said. "And as long as Mr. Conner keeps on, you're never like to be wanting work."

"Maybe not, but there's no knowing what may happen next," said Phil. You see, he was in a mood to take everything on its wrong side. And then he got up, and said, "I'm going out now, but I'm not going far. You needn't suppose I've changed my mind, Sue." "No," said I.

"Only there's different ways of doing it," says I. "I suppose it's a question which is the best way."

"I'm not going to be put upon any longer," says Phil gruffly. "He's determined to have the upper hand of me, and I'm determined he shan't."

"Well, the Bible does tell us not to be overcome of evil," said I, as quiet as I could. 'So you've got to conquer him, no doubt." "It don't mean

I expect Philip was going to say, "It don't mean that, though." But he stopped short in the middle, shut his lips, and walked