should eat nothing, and so lay the foundations
of a weak constitution. Tunnicliff was
often getting money from unknown sources,
and bringing it forth, generally in coppers,
with a request that I would go and buy her
something which she fancied. Sometimes it
was a hot roll, or a tea-cake, or a dried fish;
sometimes it was grapes—slightly damaged,
but a great many for a penny—at a grocer's
a long way down the road. Far or near,
early or late, were all the same to Tunnicliff.
What she wanted must be fetched; and if I
was a little behind time, I was grumbled at
for my pains. When she complained of Miss
Furbey behind her back, it did seem to me
strange that she did not think of how she
sent me about herself; but I never dared to
refuse to go. Tunnicliff's knowledge of the
world, Tunnicliff's notions of how she ought
to be treated, Tunnicliff's powers of ridicule
and contempt for what I should have
respected, made me afraid of her. I believed
that Miss Furbey would think twice before
provoking her. Indeed, I know that she once
caught her in the looking-glass making
grimaces, and shaking her fist behind her
back, and never said a word, pretending that
she had not seen anything. When we were
all sitting at work by candlelight in the
parlour behind the shop, Tunnicliff used to wink
at me to bid me notice the shadow of her tall,
angular figure on the wainscot, as she sat,
quite upright, on her chair. I do not know
how old she was. My fellow-apprentice said,
"Forty: if she's a day;" but I do not believe
she was so old as that, She wore a plain
stuff dress, with great bishop's sleeves, and
was as hollow-chested as an old man. Her
nose was rather longer than becomes a female
face, and her left eye had something peculiar
about it. I never knew exactly what was the
matter with it. It was not a glass eye, I
know; for it moved a little; though there
was a want of correspondence between its
movements and those of the other eye that
quite annoyed you. When the one was intent
upon her work, the other seemed to be watching
me. I had a dread of Miss Furbey's eye,
and could not bear, for a long time, to be
alone with her, on account of it. My
companion had, of course, something to say about
it. The first day I was there, she said to me
privately, "Have you noticed her eye?"
She said she could always tell when she was
in a bad temper by it. But I never saw any
difference in it all the time I was there. Miss
Furbey would scold Tunnicliff occasionally,
which was generally about her habits of
giggling. I believe she thought it the most
unfortunate failing she had, and that, but for
that, they might have got on very well together.
Tunnicliff, every now and then, would
break out in a fit of laughter without any
reasonable cause, and would end by setting
me laughing too, though I hardly ever knew
what it was about. There seemed to be a
kind of intoxication in it; for Tunnicliff
could not help it. The fit would seize her
sometimes in the morning, and would be sure
to break out again at intervals all day. A
sneeze from me, or an ineffectual attempt to
thread a needle on the part of Miss Furbey,
was sure to set her off. It would generally
come on at tea-time, when her mouth was
full. Miss Furbey said it made her so
nervous that she really could not sit in the
room if she gave way to it; and I have often
seen her tremble at the sound of it. She
even implored her once so earnestly to desist
that I could not help pitying her. She was
actually pale and breathless, and seemed as
much distressed as if she had been subjected
to some cruel persecution. There was a
careworn look in her face, that I think made
me like her from that hour. I talked to
Tunnicliff about her conduct afterwards; but
she said that she was an old fidget, and it
served her right; and that it was rather hard
to have to slave all day for nothing, and not
to be allowed to laugh if one was inclined.

Tunnicliff's relatives lived a long way off,
and Miss Furbey considered herself in some
measure her guardian, and bound to look
after her moral conduct. The principal
grievance of Tunnicliff related to Sunday
afternoons, and Miss Furbey's prying anxiety
to know where she went at those times; but
when I came down, and we used to go out
together, Miss Furbey became less anxious
about her. Tunnicliff, for fear of an
unfavourable report to her friends, feigned a
dislike to the preacher at Bow Church, and a
preference for one at West Ham: but as
soon as we were clear of the house, she boldly
proposed tea-gardens. We used to go to
Clay Hall, where there was a curious
exhibition of puppets; or to the Adam and Eve
beside the river at West Ham; or to a public
garden down at Old Ford, where two painted
sentinels guarded the entrance, and the
grounds were ornamented with big figure-
heads of old vessels, highly painted, and
looking very grim peeping out of the
shrubberies. Here Tunnicliff made the acquaintance
of a baker, which made me very
unhappy in my mind; for the baker began
to talk of Miss Furbey (whom he had never
seen) with great familiarity, and advised
open defiance of her. Tunnicliff bound me,
under the most solemn threats, not to tell
about her acquaintance with the baker; and
when Miss Furbey asked me if we had been
to West Ham Church, I am sorry to say that
I answered "Yes" in a trembling voice, and
so became too deeply implicated in the affair
to get out of it.

One day, Miss Furbey told us that she was
going away for two days, and spoke so
confidently of the trust she reposed in us, that it
gave me a pang of remorse. Tunnicliff found
out somehow that she was gone to fetch her
father at Billericay, and having once heard of
somebody who had become reduced, and
been compelled to go into the workhouse in