What he meant I could not say. But he should have been a capital actor, because not a muscle of his face moved. A man behind him laughed--stinging me as with the lash of a whip.

The big woman delivered herself of her former ejaculation.

"Poor dear!"

The potato washer remarked,--

"Strikes me, my girl, that you've a good opinion of yourself."

The grey-headed man had his eyes upon what I had in my hand.

"What might you happen to have there?"

"It's some food which I have brought for you."

"For me in particular, or for all the lot of us?"

"It's for the seven."