Then, with showers of kisses on the pale, woe-struck face, little Miss Joy was gone.
CHAPTER II.
LITTLE MISS JOY.
Little Miss Joy was the pride of the row, and always seemed to bring a ray of sunshine with her.
She lived with an old man she called "Uncle Bobo," who kept a curiously mixed assortment of wares, in the little dark shop where he had lived, man and boy, for fifty years.
He was professedly a dealer in nautical instruments, the manufacture of which was carried on in Birmingham or Sheffield. Every now and then a large packing-case would excite the inhabitants of the row, as it was borne on one of the Yarmouth carts constructed on purpose for the convenience of passing through the rows, and dropped down with a tremendous thud on the pavement opposite Mr. Boyd's door.
No wheels but the wheels of these carts were ever heard in the row, unless it were a wheelbarrow or a truck. And none of these were welcome, as it was difficult for foot-passengers to pass if one of these vehicles stopped the way.
The nautical instruments by no means represented all Mr. Boyd's stock-in-trade. Compasses and aneroids and ship's lamps were the superior articles to be sold. But there were endless odds and ends—"curiosities"—bits of carving, two or three old figure-heads of ships, little ship-lanthorns, and knives of all shapes and sizes, balls of twine, rolls of cable, and all packed into the narrow limits of the tiny shop.
"Uncle Bobo" was coming home one night—a Christmas night—a few years before the time my story opens, when he heard a wailing cry as he fitted the latch-key into his own door.