'It seems dreadful,' says I when I'd done, 'to send such as her to the workhouse, don't it ?' 'Workhouse!' says Peggy, firing up directly; 'I only wish we could catch the man who's got her in that scrape, and put him in there on water-gruel for the rest of his life.

I'd give a shillin' a wheal out of my own pocket for the blessed privilege of scoring the thief's face with my whip, till his own mother wouldn't know him!' And then she went on, sir, abusing all the men in her Irish way, which I can't repeat.

At last she stops, and claps me on the back.

'You're a darlin' old girl, Peck!' says she, 'and your friends are my friends.

Stop where you are, and let me speak a word to the young woman on the trunk.' "After a little while she comes back, and says, 'I've done it, Peck! She's mighty close, and as proud as Lucifer; but she's only a dressmaker, for all that.' 'A dressmaker!' says I; 'how did you find out she was a dressmaker ?' 'Why, I looked at her forefinger, in course,' says Peggy, 'and saw the pricks of the needle on it, and soon made her talk a bit after that.