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"Were you ever at Oakford?" she asked, turning her grey eyes on me. She spoke almost abruptly, and with a touch of imperiousness that suddenly recalled to me where I had seen those eyes before. "Certainly," said I, "and at the tinsmith's." "What were you doing there?" she asked, and after all these years there was no mistaking the accent and gesture of the little lady of the grey beaver.
One morning I saw the donkey, the man, the Spanish saddle, and the beaver bonnets come over the brow of the hill, and I forthwith ran to Nurse Bundle, and begged leave to go alone to the tinsmith's, and invest one of my eight farthings in a flat iron.
Instantly a young man, whom I was fain to believe Q, though he bore not the least resemblance, either in dress or facial expression to any renderings of that youth which I had yet seen, emerged from the tinsmith's house, and approached the one I was in. Observing him cast a hurried glance in my direction, I crossed the floor, and stood awaiting him at the head of the stairs.
In point of fact, during the whole of our married life I have made it a rule never to absent myself from her side without bringing back some trifling gift. Women as you will understand one of these days set a value on these petits soins; and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the iron bridge a tinsmith's should not be hard to find . . . Ah, thanks, my dear fellow thanks inexpressibly!
The coachman he had gold lace on his hat and coat got down and went in to the tinsmith's. "You must wring that sheet right out, Barbara," said the neighbour's wife; "it'll be the last you'll wring here, for that's the Consul's carriage." And Barbara wrung the sheet until there was not a drop of water in it. It had come now!
Aw saw a faace look out o' window o' hoose by tinsmith's shop, an' that faace was like hell's picture-aye, 'twas a killiagous faace that! Aw never again could pass that house. 'Twas a woman's faace. Horrible 'twas, an' sore sad an' flootered aw were, for t' faace was like a lass aw loved when aw wur a lad."
There was a great deal of grimy infant life up and down the place, and there was a hot moist smell within, as of the "boiling" of dirty linen. Brooksmith sat with a blanket over his legs at a clean little window where, from behind stiff bluish-white curtains, he could look across at a huckster's and a tinsmith's and a small greasy public-house.
Blockmaker Holman, blockmaker Holman! The name rang in her ears as, heavy-hearted, she entered the tinsmith's. There he lay among the ragged, dirty clothes, pale, thin and neglected, with frightened eyes. He began to cry when she took him up; he did not know her, and she scarcely knew him.
And then the neighbour's wife, whom she had so often helped, came out and began to talk and give her information, rattling on like a steam-engine. There had been war among the neighbours in the tinsmith's alley, and now that she saw Barbara herself, the truth should out, the real, actual truth. The tinsmith's people need not imagine that other people hadn't got eyes in their head!
She was dressed exactly like the other, with one exception; her bonnet was of white beaver, and she became it like a queen. At the tinsmith's door they stopped, and the old man-servant, after unbuckling a strap which seemed to support them in their saddle, lifted each little miss in turn to the ground.
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