The description elicited a second edition of the pity—third of the head shaking—as the woman answered:
It is difficult to keep a watchful eye ever on the safety valve. The indignation within him was seething to boiling point. He was getting up steam so rapidly as to create the impression that his emotions were arranged on the principle of the tubular boiler. He blurted out:
"I tell you, you are wrong! Her name is Miss Mivvins!"
Combination of every unpleasant wrinkle that the human face is capable of assuming, as she replied, with the incisiveness of a knife cut:
"Very likely that's one of her names, sir! Now I come to remember, I did once in a shop 'ear her called so—called so by her own child."
That was the last straw! the safety valve was discarded. He blurted out:
"Her—own—child!"
"Yes. The little girl who's always with her. The one with the carity 'air as some people calls orebin."
Amazement! Consternation! Disappointment! A combination of these feelings, and many other indescribable ones, made him break out with: