“Here’s somebody a-comin’,” cried Mrs Winks, suddenly starting into life from the bundle of collapsed clothes that seemed to be heaped the minute before upon the floor. “Most likely it’s Mr Pellet come to fetch you, my dear; and oh! what faces we three have got!—all swelled up with cryin’ so as was never seen. What’s goin’ to come of us all? for, dear me, if it ain’t for all the world like a scene in a play, with the lovers all going crosswise and the others crooked; and I declare once if I didn’t think as the curtain was going to come down in a minute, and I should have to fetch my basket. But there! do wipe your eyes, my dears—there’s somebody a-comin’; and it’s glad I shall be when it comes to the last act, and everybody’s made happy ever after—except Jack Screwby, as is the bad villin of the whole piece. Come, dry your eyes, do.”
Mrs Winks gave her own optics a most tremendous scrub with her apron as she spoke, drying them certainly, but at the same time making them far more red. Then she made an elephantine kind of movement towards the door, holding it to with one hand, signalling with the other to her young companions to remove the remaining traces of tears, and nodding and frowning till there was a gentle tap, and a voice said from the outside—
“May we come in?”
“Ah!” exclaimed the stout dame, smiling, “I’m glad you’ve come home, Mr Canau,” as, on her opening the door, the Frenchman entered the room, closely followed by Jared Pellet, who raised his eyebrows as he saw the traces of the tears the girls had shed.
“I only wish you’d been here, Mr Canau, I do!” exclaimed Mrs Winks; “for it’s dreadful, people coming and going on as they do and half fainting away for brandy.”
Jared looked serious as he heard the narrative of what had taken place, and then he glanced uneasily from one to the other, ending by sighing as he thought of how much trouble there was in the world; and soon after Patty and he were hurrying through the streets, with the poor-box uppermost in Jared’s thoughts, so that he had not a word for his child.