"It is a pity the child did not have his face washed, certainly," she
said.
At last a customer! No, only the cutler's little boy, Franky's chum, from
across the way.
The cutler hired a strip of garden on one of the roads, and when tea was
over, in the summer evenings, Franky and the cutler's son ran off together
to their garden to get into what childish mischief was possible in the
restricted space.
"Franky isn't in, this evening," Mrs. Day told the boy. "He's gone for a
drive with Mr. Forcus." She gave him a screw of acid-drops for himself,
and the boy ran off.
"All ri', thenk ye. Tell Franky I looked in," he called.
The next comer was the fat little maid-of-all-work from the butcher's,
near by. She was red-haired, with a large goitre over which her afternoon
black frock would not quite button. She was hardly worked from early
morning, to late evening, and Mrs. Day, ever full of compassion for the
weak and oppressed, was kind and gentle to her.
She was generally breathless with hurry and the trouble of the goitre, and
Mrs. Day took no special notice of her panting condition now.
"What for you to-night, Alice?" she asked her.
"It's soap," Alice gasped. "Soap, and matches, and six eggs for the
morning's breakfast, and I was to tell you, if you please, as you was to
put in seven, steads of six, for one in the last lot was stale.
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