"Your child—belongs to you—" repeated the man who was about to lift the helpless figure on to a stretcher. "Aye, it's old Dolls—tipsy old Dolls—" cried some one in the crowd, for it was by this name that they knew the old man.
"He's her father, sir," said Riah in a low tone to the doctor who was now bending over the stretcher.
"So much the worse," answered the doctor, "for the man is dead."
Yes, "Mr. Dolls" was dead, and many were the dresses which the weary fingers of the sorrowful little worker must make in order to pay for his humble funeral, and buy a black frock for herself. Often the tears rolled down on to her work. "My poor child," she said to Riah, "my poor old child, and to think I scolded him so."
"You were always a good, brave, patient girl," returned Riah, "always good and patient, however tired."
And so the poor little "person of the house" was left alone but for the faithful affection of the kind Jew, and her friend Lizzie. Her room grew pretty comfortable, for she was in great request in her "profession" as she called it, and there was now no one to spend and waste her earnings. But nothing could make her life otherwise than a suffering one till the happy morning, when her child-angels visited her for the last time and carried her away to the land where all such pain as hers is healed for evermore.
PIP'S ADVENTURE.
ALL that little Philip Pirrip, usually called Pip, knew about his father and mother, and five little brothers, was from seeing their tombstones in the churchyard. He was taken care of by his sister, who was twenty years older than himself. She had married a blacksmith, named Joe Gargery, a kind, good man, while she, unfortunately, was a hard, stern woman, and treated her little brother and her amiable husband with great harshness. They lived in a marshy part of the country, about twenty miles from the sea.