76 RANGE OF APPRENTICESHIP. 



house, which was not sufficiently respectable to her means, though 

 highly eligible for her ends, and so crammed with every thing 

 good, that, on a person's entering it, he was at a loss which most 

 to admire, her stock in trade or household furniture. Whether 

 the premises were her own or another's I cannot now determine ; 

 but the whole range was in her occupancy, and once formed the 

 habitat of a very decent circle, which either death or distance, or 

 perhaps both, assisted to remove. — It was not however to her 

 wish nor will that their places became vacant, nor had she a 

 a wish to stimulate a will that they should ever he again famili- 

 arly filled. 



Mrs. Provolvus was what is termed a blunt, straight-forward 

 creature, perhaps not too much so for many of her customers. 

 If any omitted, per lack of memory, the settlement of his or her 

 score, she had lungs sufficiently strong to recruit it. She was a 

 good-natured creature withal. There were many of her custom- 

 ers of the humblest class. If sickness visited them, and their 

 incomes denied their families the usual necessaries, their absence 

 was soon discovered. She would remark, " Why I have not seen 

 So-and-so for the week — what is become of her? — I must run 

 over (or up, or down, or across, as the case might be) and learn.'* 

 Off she would waddle — she was too ponderous to walk. "Well 

 then,'^ she would exclaim, " what in Pity*s name is the matter 

 here? bad eh ? hem ! pretty this is n't 't;" while some donation 

 was sure to follow. In one instance a poor soul owed her a 

 shilling. She was honest " to the back-bone," as we say at the 

 extreme west, and on Mrs. Provolvus' visit, remarked, that from 

 unexpected illness she was unable to pay it. " Who hath said 

 anything to thee about a shilling," angrily growled the old dame. 

 — " It would serve 'e right if I had. — Dost think, that being bad, 

 and not telling a body of it, is the way either to pay the shilling 

 or make thyself well. — " Betsey," said she, to the sick woman's 

 girl, " haste with me, and let us try if we can't help the doctor 

 to make mother better." Retracing her steps, some ready made 

 comfort would be given, and how necessary such is — how prefer- 

 able in many cases to medicine, for the restoration of the languid 

 frame to health and usefulness, those best can /e<'/ who are poor 

 — those best appreciate, whom benevolence prompts to visit the 

 poor. 



The real cause of my revisiting the long forsaken neighbour- 

 hood, I do not recollect, but I entered it with almost the same 

 gladness as a Cossack's horse his snowy plains, after a cam- 



