This dialogue occurred only a short distance from Mr. Wesden's shop, when Mr. Wesden was putting up the shutters in his own quiet way, with very little noise, his boy having left him at a moment's notice. Mrs. Wesden, who had her fears for his back—Mr. W. had had a sensitive back for years—was dragging the shutters out from under the shop-board—thin slips of wood, that required not any degree of strength to manage. There were six shutters—at the third Mr. Wesden said—
"There's Mattie."
"Ah! poor girl!"
At the fifth he added—
"With an old woman that I don't like the style of very much."
Mrs. Wesden went to the door, and looked down the street at the tempter and the tempted—Mattie was under the lamp, and the face was a troubled one, on which the gas jet flickered. When the sixth shutter was up, and the iron band that secured them all firmly screwed into the door-post, the quiet couple stood side by side and watched the conflict to its abrupt conclusion. Both guessed what the subject had been—there was something of the night-bird and the gaol-bird about Mrs. Watts, that was easy of detection.
Mrs. Wesden touched her husband's arm.
"Danger, John."
"Ah!"
"And that girl has been a-going on so quietly for years, and getting her own living, and she without a father and a mother to care for her—not like our Harriet."