her to a place where she will be well
educated.

"She ain't old enough to be educated,"
moaned Nurse Pigott. "Besides, my 'usband
reads beautiful, and there's a lovely school round
the corner at twopence a week, and let alone
teaching, there's nobody but me knows how
much bread-and-butter she wants."

"Pray let me have no more of this painful
discussion," the dandy, with calm dignity,
interposed. "When I made an appointment with
you to meet me here, you understood the purpose
for which you were to bring the child. You
have been paid for her maintenance, and I must
tell you, that if you have any views of gaining
more money by her, they will be disappointed."

"Money!" exclaimed Nurse Pigott, half
choking, and by this time as much with indignation
as with grief. " Money! I scorns it. It
isn't money I want, nor my 'usband neither. If
the dear child had been put out to us by the
parish, we'd ha' done our dooty by it. If its
fathers and mothers were lords and ladies and
hemperors, we'd ha' done the same. It isn't for
the money, though little enough, goodness knows,
and not paid regular, which you know, sir, not
being disrespectable to you. And if you'd leave
the darling with us, and money was a little short,
I'm sure we'd wait for better times, and never
trouble you for one brass farthing, if you'd only
let us 'ave our little little Lily." Nurse Pigott
subsided after this into mere incoherence of grief.

Mr. Blunt winced when reminded that he had
not been too punctual a paymaster. He could
see, however, that the remark was totally devoid
of malice.  He could not help acknowledging
that the child, whom he had seen, perhaps, six
times during three years, had been reared with
infinite love and tenderness by Nurse Pigott,
all vulgar and dumpy as she was. And
something like a feeling of shame made his mind
blush at the remembrance that this love and
tenderness had been bestowed upon Lily by
strangers.

"There, there, Nurse Pigott," he said, as
soothingly as he could, "I'm sure you've done
your best with the little thing, and her papa
and her mamma (who is too ill, poor thing,
to come and see her) are very much obliged to
you. Only, you know, the best of friends must
part. I told you that, ever so long ago. Come,
don't let us have any more fuss – you can't tell
how it injures my nerves – and kiss the child and
all that sort of thing, for I'm rather pressed for
time."

Nurse Pigott had her nerves too, and for
days she had been attempting to nerve herself
to undergo with fortitude a separation, which
Blunt, to do him justice, had warned her was
inevitable. For you see that to part with a
domestic pet round which the cords of your
heart have twined themselves, is very very hard.
And Nurse Pigott had known Lily long before
she could speak or walk. She had sat by her
night after night in those sicknesses when the
life of a little child is as easily blown out as a
rushlight. She had rejoiced in her growing
strength and beauty. For what light and
knowledge there was already in Lily's mind, Nurse
Pigott, with rough homely kindly hands, had
opened the door. She had taught the little
morsel of Christianity to prattle some prayers, to
lisp some key-notes of reverence and fear, and
to look up at the sky, and talk of what became of
good and naughty people. Lily used to call her
"mumma," and the male Pigott (plasterer by
trade, honest and kind-hearted fellow by nature)
she accosted as " dada." Yes; the divorce was
hard, albeit the youngling was none of their own.
They had no girls; but Lily had possessed as a
foster-brother the surviving twin, a tranquil little
boy, with wisdom far beyond his years, who
passed the major part of his time in sprawling
on the ground (probably out of doors), in earnest
contemplation of the curious features of that
external world which the doctor forbade his
parents to entertain a hope of his long living to
investigate. Lily's nurture under the auspices of
Nurse Pigott had been the reverse of refined, but
it had never lacked affectionate and sedulous care.
The good woman absolutely doted on her charge,
although five shillings a week was all the
remuneration she received for tending her. Work
was sometimes slack with the plasterer, and he,
his wife and the twin (whose profoundly philosophical
temperament led him to regard potato-
peelings as an aliment equal in succulence to
bread-and-butter, or even to meat), had occasionally
to go on short commons; but Lily was
never bereft of a meal abundant in quantity and
nourishing in quality. She had never known
what it was to go without pudding. A slight
meat eater she was, as beseemed her age; yet
what morsels of flesh she required were never
wanting, even if they had to be purchased from
the proceeds accruing from the deposit in tribulation
of the plasterer's great silver watch. The
male Pigott's affection for her was prodigious. In
her earliest youth he could with difficulty be
deterred from offering her sups of beer from his
evening pint; and when told that the fermented
infusion of malt and hops was improper refreshment
for a child, he, of his own motion, absolutely
forewent a nightly moiety of his beer money in
order to purchase apples and gingerbread for his
foster-baby. The price of half a pint of porter
was not a very sumptuous bounty; but a penny
goes a very long way in a poor man's household.

Lily's stock of clothes had never been very
extensive nor very abundant; but Nurse Pigott had
kept the little wardrobe with admirable and
scrupulous neatness. Only once during the three years
and a half had she ever importuned Mr. Blunt
(with whom she was instructed to correspond
through the medium of a London post-office, and
the initials F. B.), for money. That was after a
journey to Kensington undertaken by the nurse,
when in the window of a certain haberdasher's
in the High-street, she had seen a robe of mouse-
coloured merino, so curiously embroidered with