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“Ay, lass; an, as we’n a’ready a foine kirsenin’ feast, we’n no change parson’s seven-shillin’ piece, but lay it oop fur th’ lad hissen.”

But the christening feast did not proceed without sundry noisy demonstrations from Master Jabez. If, as Simon had once hinted, he was an angel in the house, he flapped his wings and blew his trumpet pretty noisily at times.

“Eh, lass, aw wish Tum wur here neaw, to enjoy hisself wi’ us. Aw wonder what he’d say to see yo’ nursin’ a babby so bonnily?”

Simon was munching a huge piece of currant-cake as he uttered this, after a meditative pause. A look of pain passed over Bessy’s face. She rarely mentioned the absent Tom, though he was seldom out of her thoughts.

“Yea, an’ aw wish he wur here!” she echoed with a sigh, the fountain of which was deep in her own breast. “Aw wonder where he is neaw.”

“Feightin’, mebbe!” suggested her father.

“Killed, mebbe!” was the fearful suggestion of her own heart, and she was silent for some time afterwards.

But the feast proceeded merrily for all that, and no wonder, where Charity was president. And there was quite as happy a party under that humble roof in Skinners’ Yard as that assembled in the grand house at Ardwick, where Master Laurence Aspinall was handed about in his embroidered robes for the inspection of guests who cared very little about him, although they did present him with silver mugs, and spoons, and corals, and protest to his pale and exhausted mamma that he was the finest infant in Manchester.