CHAPTER I.

The Patient Restored.

"I'M glad that you'll have your husband back again to-day, Mrs. Laver, and I hope that such a long time spent in the hospital will have set him up for good," said Mrs. Batten, the fishmonger's stout good-humoured wife, as she took up the little parcel of snuff which she had just been purchasing at Mrs. Laver's counter.

"It is time he was back indeed. I've had the shop on my hands these ten weeks, or rather, I may say, these six months, for Martin was, I may say, good for nothing long before he took to his bed," replied Mrs. Laver.

She was a thin care-worn woman, about thirty years of age, who had in her youth been good-looking; but the lines on the forehead, and at the corners of the lips, showed the trace of trouble, and perhaps also of temper. Mrs. Laver's manner of speaking was snappish and short, giving an impression, even to strangers, that her life was full of worries, and that she had not much patience to enable her to bear them. Mrs. Laver's dress was decidedly shabby, and was by no means improved by her attempt to make it look gay. Fringe, that did not match her gown in colour, had been sewn on to hide the patches; Mrs. Laver had stuck faded roses into her brown-black lace-cap, and dangling gaudy gilt drops were hanging down from her ears. The tobacconist's wife had a trick of jerking her head when anything annoyed her, which set these earrings quivering and shaking as if in anger or scorn. Altogether, with her sharp grey eyes, and tightly-drawn lips, Mrs. Laver looked a person with whom few would care to be very closely acquainted.

"Certainly it's hard upon a woman to have charge of a tobacconist's shop," observed the fishmonger's wife, glancing at the window, which was darkened with bundles of meerschaums, and boxes of cheap cigars, labels of "Government manillas," and "fine old shag," with pipes whose bowls were fashioned into all kinds of fanciful shapes to attract apprentice boys, and other juvenile customers. Mingled with these, prints and ballads, of a very low description, helped to block up the panes.

Mrs. Laver shrugged her shoulders at the observation; she quite agreed that her lot was a hard one.

"I'm sure," she said, "that if any one knew the moiling and toiling I've had, what with looking after the shop, and keeping things tidy and respectable like, minding the child, and—ah! You little brat!" exclaimed Mrs. Laver, interrupting her complaint, to make a sudden dash at her little girl, a child of about two years of age, who, having been placed by her mother on the counter, had stretched out her hand to the jar of snuff left upon it.

"You're always in mischief, you are!"

There was a sharp slap, and then a low sobbing cry; little Annie was not likely soon to forget the maternal lesson against meddling with goods on the counter.

"Poor little soul," said Mrs. Batten, glancing with pity at the child, whose cheek, usually pale, was reddened by the mother's blow, and wet with the tears running down. "How like she is to her father, to be sure! She does not look over strong either. You'll bring her with you to Greenwich to-morrow, and your husband too, I suppose."

"Yes, a breath of fresh air on the river would do any one good who had to live in this poky little street! Hold your noise, will you!"

These last words were addressed by Mrs. Laver to Annie, and accompanied by a violent shaking of the little girl's arm, which set the mother's earrings quivering.

"If you go on whining like that, I'll give you to the black man, I will, instead of taking you with me to Greenwich!"

Mrs. Batten had just succeeded in fumbling a lozenge out of her pocket, and whether from the effects of the sweet, the threat, or the shaking, Annie was soon quiet enough, though her cheeks still glistened with the tears which her mother had not wiped away.

"We start at two, don't forget," said Mrs. Batten; "if to-morrow is as fine as to-day, the steamer is like to be crowded."

"The more the merrier," replied Ann Laver, the frown passing away from her brow, though its furrow always remained there: "a bit of a spree will brighten up my man; he had got so gloomy and moping-like when his illness was coming on, that I did not know what to make of him. He's fond of the river, I know. Good-day to you, Mrs. Batten. We'll be down at the wharf before two."

"Good-bye, little one," said the fishmonger's wife, as she quitted the shop, nodding and smiling at Annie, who, still perched on the counter, watched her with wistful eyes.

The sweet little face of the child was again very pale, with its habitual expression of patience and thought. Annie did not look like a light-hearted child. One might have fancied, as she sat with her large blue eyes fixed on the jars and pipes and papers in the window, that a good deal was passing through her infant mind, and that not of a cheerful description.

Though Mrs. Laver was fond of her only child, there was not much tenderness in her manner towards her. Mrs. Laver would have been indignant had any one charged her with cruelty, above all towards her daughter; but the harsh word, the hasty slap, the angry threat with which Annie was familiar, had much the same effect on the poor little girl that a blight has on the tender green leaves of the spring. Annie loved her mother, but scarcely as much as she feared her. The little one wanted more of the sunshine of smiles.

She had pined wearily for her father, and the two first nights after Martin Laver had gone to the hospital, his child had cried herself to sleep, "'Cause Daddy's away, and I can't have his bye-bye kiss," as she sobbed.