May see you then." Hilliard mused enviously on the brass bedstead business.
On looking in at the Camden Town music-shop about this time he found Patty Ringrose flurried and vexed by an event which disturbed her prospects.

Her uncle the shopkeeper, a widower of about fifty, had announced his intention of marrying again, and, worse still, of giving up his business.
"It's the landlady of the public-house where he goes to play billiards," said Patty with scornful mirth; "a great fat woman! Oh! And he's going to turn publican.

And my aunt and me will have to look out for ourselves." This aunt was the shopkeeper's maiden sister who had hitherto kept house for him.

"She had been promised an allowance," said Patty, "but a very mean one." "I don't care much for myself," the girl went on; "there's plenty of shops where I can get an engagement, but of course it won't be the same as here, which has been home for me ever since I was a child.

There! the things that men will do! I've told him plain to his face that he ought to be ashamed of himself, and so has aunt.