"I should be sorry to hurt your feelings,
Mrs. Deg," he said, "but I have my fears that
you are coming to this place with false expectations.
I fear your husband did not give
you the truest possible account of his family
here."

"Oh, Sir! What—what is it? " exclaimed
the poor woman; " in God's name, tell me!"

"Why, nothing more than this," said the
manufacturer, " that there are very few of the
Degs left here. They are old, and on the
parish, and can do nothing for you."

The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was
silent.

"But don't be east down," said Mr. Spires.
He would not tell her what a pauper family
it really was, for he saw that she was a very
feeling woman, and he thought she would
learn that soon enough. He felt that her
husband had from vanity given her a false
account of his connections; and he was really
sorry for her.

"Don't be cast down," he went on, " you
can wash and iron, you say; you are young
and strong: those are your friends. Depend
on them, and they 'll be better friends to you
than any other."

The poor woman was silent, leaning her
head down on her slumbering child, and crying
to herself; and thus they drove on, through
many long and narrow streets, with gas flaring
from the shops, but with few people in the
streets, and these hurrying shivering along
the pavement, so intense was the cold. Anon
they stopped at a large pair of gates; the
manufacturer rung a bell, which he could
reach from his gig, and the gates presently
were flung open, and they drove into a spacious
yard, with a large handsome house, having a
bright lamp burning before it, on one side of
the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.

"Show this poor woman and her child to
Mrs. Craddock's, James," said Mr. Spires,
"and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very
comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse
to-morrow," added he, addressing the
poor woman, " perhaps I can be of some use
to you."

The poor woman poured out her heartfelt
thanks, and, following the old man servant,
soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly
pavement with her living load, stiffened
almost to stone by her fatigue and her cold
ride.

We must not pursue too minutely our narrative.
Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the
washing and getting up of Mr. Spire's linen,
and the manner in which she executed her
task insured her recommendations to all their
friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ.
She occupied a neat house in a yard near the
meadows below the town, and in those
meadows she might be seen spreading out her
clothes to whiten on the grass, attended by
her stout little boy. In the same yard lived
a shoemaker, who had two or three children
of about the same age as Mrs. Deg's child.
The children, as time went on, became playfellows.
Little Simon might be said to have
the free run of the shoemaker's house, and he
was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker's
birds, and by his flute, on which he
often played after his work was done.

Mrs. Deg took a great friendship for this
shoemaker: and he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted
woman, were almost all the acquaintances
that she cultivated. She had found out
her husband's parents, but they were not of a
description that at all pleased her. They were
old and infirm, but they were of the true
pauper breed, a sort of person, whom Mrs. Deg
had been taught to avoid and to despise.
They looked on her as a sort of second parish,
and insisted that she should come and live
with them, and help to maintain them out of
her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather
her little boy had died than have been familiarised
with the spirit and habits of those old
people. Despise them she struggled hard not
to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient
to maintain them on condition that they desisted
from any further application to the
parish. It would be a long and disgusting
story to recount all the troubles, annoyance,
and querulous complaints, and even bitter
accusations that she received from these connections,
whom she could never satisfy; but
she considered it one of her crosses in her life,
and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered
no real want, so long as they lived, which was
for years; but she would never allow her little
Simon to be with them alone.

The shoemaker neighbour was a stout protection
to her against the greedy demands of
these old people, and of others of the old Degs,
and also against another class of inconvenient
visitors, namely, suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg
a neat and comely young woman with a flourishing
business, and a neat and soon well-furnished
house, a very desirable acquisition.
But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to
marry, but to live for her boy, and she kept
her resolve in firmness and gentleness.

The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive
town meadows to gather groundsell
and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets,
and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany
him with his own children. There William
Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to
the children the beauty of the flowers, the
insects, and other objects of nature; and while
he sate on a stile and read in a little old book
of poetry, as he often used to do, the children
sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves
in a variety of plays.

The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker's
conversation on little Simon Deg was
such as never wore out of him through his
whole life, and soon led him to astonish the
shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He
manifested the utmost uneasiness at their
treading on the flowers in the grass; he would
burst with tears if they persisted in it; and
when asked why, he said they were so beautiful,