As the load was put down in the street, Riah drew the head of the party aside, and whispered that he thought the man was dying. “No, surely not?” returned the other. But he became less confident, on looking, and directed the bearers to “bring him to the nearest doctor’s shop.”

Thither he was brought; the window becoming from within, a wall of faces, deformed into all kinds of shapes through the agency of globular red bottles, green bottles, blue bottles, and other coloured bottles. A ghastly light shining upon him that he didn’t need, the beast so furious but a few minutes gone, was quiet enough now, with a strange mysterious writing on his face, reflected from one of the great bottles, as if Death had marked him: “Mine.”

The medical testimony was more precise and more to the purpose than it sometimes is in a Court of Justice. “You had better send for something to cover it. All’s over.”

Therefore, the police sent for something to cover it, and it was covered and borne through the streets, the people falling away. After it, went the dolls’ dressmaker, hiding her face in the Jewish skirts, and clinging to them with one hand, while with the other she plied her stick. It was carried home, and, by reason that the staircase was very narrow, it was put down in the parlour — the little working-bench being set aside to make room for it — and there, in the midst of the dolls with no speculation in their eyes, lay Mr. Dolls with no speculation in his.

Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money was in the dressmaker’s pocket to get mourning for Mr. Dolls. As the old man, Riah, sat by, helping her in such small ways as he could, he found it difficult to make out whether she really did realize that the deceased had been her father.

“If my poor boy,” she would say, “had been brought up better, he might have done better. Not that I reproach myself. I hope I have no cause for that.”

“None indeed, Jenny, I am very certain.”

“Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn’t always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with children!”

“Too often, even in this sad sense!” thought the old man.

“How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having been so bad and my legs so queer, when I was young!” the dressmaker would go on. “I had nothing to do but work, and so I worked. I couldn’t play. But my poor unfortunate child could play, and it turned out the worse for him.”

“And not for him alone, Jenny.”

“Well! I don’t know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my unfortunate boy. He was very, very ill sometimes. And I called him a quantity of names;” shaking her head over her work, and dropping tears. “I don’t know that his going wrong was much the worse for me. If it ever was, let us forget it.”

“You are a good girl, you are a patient girl.”

“As for patience,” she would reply with a shrug, “not much of that, godmother. If I had been patient, I should never have called him names. But I hope I did it for his good. And besides, I felt my responsibility as a mother, so much. I tried reasoning, and reasoning failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing failed. I tried scolding, and scolding failed. But I was bound to try everything, you know, with such a charge upon my hands. Where would have been my duty to my poor lost boy, if I had not tried everything!”

With such talk, mostly in a cheerful tone on the part of the industrious little creature, the day-work and the night-work were beguiled until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring into the kitchen, where