Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men

e tinker-mother," whi

a winter's nap. When-as in the case of men-they last for a lifetime, and you never get more than one night's rest at a time, they must be al

ing more attention to the women than to my observations-an annoyance to wh

woman's feet, soothing her and ch

et him, Mother

mark on the gate-post, placed there by some travelling tinker or pedler or what not, by which I knows that the neighbourhood is being made too hot for tramps an

my daughter; and when I comes accidentally across my son in a Bedfordshire lane, and his wife is drinking, and he is in muc

e back

good to him; but for which he would probably have run away long before. But what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. He does pretty well with the learning, and he bears with the confinement of school, though it is worse than that of the cler

e find you

a hedge to bandage one of his feet with his handkerchief, he sees our patteran, and he

that he ca

nt door for the genteel and a back door for the common people. If it was so, prisons would be homes. But home, m

, "what did you do a

ing to that neighbourhood, for the police was searching everywhere, and it would be wearisome to re

they shows kindness to those who are in trouble, and they spends their money very freely on the poor. This is well known, even by those who has no liking for parsons, and I

such as Punch and Judy men, or singers, or fortune tellers; at the same time he is as pleased with a good collection as if it were for his own use; and if some rich person contri

cart with greens, and on Sunday morning I goes to church in a very respectable disguisement, and the sexton puts me in a pew with some women of infirm mind in workhouse dresses, for which, my daughter, I had much to do to restrain myself from knocking him down. But I does; and I behaves my

pays little attention, my daughter, for all my thoughts is taken up with waiting for the collection to begin, and with t

ld, Mother, as if she

was not with age. I tells you that I tried not to

man is speaking, and the ten pieces of gold is getting so hot in my hands, I fa

o pay our way like the rest, and that the plates will never be put into our pew at all. So when the last but one is going past me, I puts out my hand to beckon him, and the

ing woman by the arm and whispers, 'If you make that noise again, I'll

n, who comes last, and he is the

small shop or the master of a workhouse. The Duke was a very old man, with bent shoulders and the slow step of age, and I thinks he did not see or hear very quickly; and when I beckons to him he goes past. But when he is so

ieces of gold and think I has stolen them. And then I knows not what I shall do, for the nobility and gentry, though quick and polite in a matter of obliging the

pry to see what the poor workhouse-company woman puts into the plate. And I am right, my daughter, for he looks away, and I lays the ten golden sovereigns

igns so hot, turns very hot, and I gets up and goes out of t

can see it now, my dear, and I know I shall remember it till I die. I thinks somehow that she was praying, though it was not a praying pa

adiness, I could not repeat one to you, my daughter, to save my life, except the words h

He will forget your work, and l