Poor little Sally, the most good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling about, with a napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the neighbours' cottages up the yard at the back of the house.

Stumps, her husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of repartee with every boy in turn.

"Stumps, you lout, you've had too much beer again to-day." "'Twasn't of your paying for, then." "Stumps's calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass." "Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours," etc.

Very poor stuff it was, but it served to make time pass; and every now and then Sally arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot running off to the house with "Put me down two-penn'orth, Sally;" "Put down three-penn'orth between me and Davis," etc.

How she ever kept the accounts so straight as she did, in her head and on her slate, was a perfect wonder.
East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the School-house, just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on the way recounting the life and adventures of Stumps, who was a character.