substance, I could hardly imagine. On her feet were satin slippers that had once been red, and once very dear; and from the cloud of fumes she breathed in my general direction, I knew her to have been indulging in brandy.
The woman was a walking advertisement for the smuggler's trade; and that her larder should boast some excellent if contraband tea, though not an ounce of oats for her children's porridge, I swiftly surmised.
“Mrs. Tibbit—” I began.
“Plain Maggie? do, now Bill's been done for,” she replied, and knocked the child from her breast with a casual blow that immediately set it to wailing. “What biz-ness ‘uv ye got wit me?”
I lifted the basket of clothing from my arm, and opened its lid. “I thought your children might benefit from these few things collected by the women of St. Michael's.”
“That Crawford bitch ‘ave sent you, bain't she?” Maggie's countenance darkened and she advanced upon me pugnaciously, her protuberant lower lip revealing some very poor teeth indeed. “Reckon she's cackling summat fearsome, in all her black feathers, now old Mag's out on the street.”
Somewhat disconcerted, I took refuge in a backwards step and a folding of my gloved hands. “I received die clothing of Miss Crawford, assuredly, as she manages St. Michael's good works—but the desire to visit, and to bestow these things upon your children, was entirely mine, I promise you, Mrs. Tibbit.”
The widow pawed through the clothing, scattering chemises and shirts with a careless disregard for the dirtiness of her floor; but in considering the grime that covered her children's bodies, I recollected that the linen should not long survive in a pristine state, and forbore to vent my outrage. The scattered goods disappeared amidst a tangle of youthful limbs, like meat torn asunder by starving wolves. “‘ere!” cried the eldest, whom I recollected to be Tom. “You've never brought us shoes!” His expression of disgust might as readily have greeted the rotten pullet nailed to his front door, and in truth, the worn leather boot he held aloft bore an ill-begotten air. But Tom need not have worried—the shoe was snatched from his fingers by a fellow urchin of indeterminate sex, arrayed in what appeared to be a fisherman's overall many sizes too large; and borne from the house with a triumphant cackle. Tom dashed into the street in pursuit, a fearsome oath emanating from his childish lips. Their mother reached for a bottle resting on the worn oak settle and took a long draught. To my relief, she did not think to offer me a similar hospitality.
“The things'U do,” she declared, and thrust the empty basket aside. “What I wants to know, miss, is why you come—when us's strangers to each other.”
“Who could be unmoved by so much misfortune, as you have lately endured, Mrs. Tibbit?”
“Oh, most o’ Lyme—and that's a fact,” she rejoined sardonically. She spared a moment to place little Jack upon the floor, and shoo the remaining two urchins towards their fellows in the street. Then she turned to me with a calculating air.
“But my troubles is none o’ yer concern, miss. What you want o’ me?”
Any further attempt at explanation on my part was immediately forestalled by the street door's being once more thrust open, to reveal a massive fellow with a belligerent face leering upon the stoop. “Eh, Mag,” he said, by way of salutation. “I've brought you summat nice.”
“Not now, Joe. I've company.”
“Company?” The fellow spat out the word like a wounded animal, and slid into the room without need of further invitation. The newcomer was burly and forceful, a fisherman from the look of his callused hands and the odour that pervaded his person, and he was clearly all but overcome with the anger engendered by his fears. It required all my fortitude not to flee through the open door, so menacing was his aspect; and yet, some sensibility that Maggie Tibbit should not be left alone with such a man, urged me to stand my ground.
“Is that Matt Hurley slidin’ up yer skirts again, and Bill not dead a fortnight?” Joe advanced upon his object, his broad hands clenching convulsively.
“You cared little enough for waitin’ yersel, for all yer talkin’. Now get out. I've a lady to visit.”
As if acknowledging my presence for the first time— though how he could have overlooked the alien fact of cleanliness in that squalid room, I do not know—Joe swung his head around and met my gaze. An instant's mortification ensued, before the fellow