Just as they were beginning to quarrel violently, I stepped back to the rag-counter, took the old cravat carelessly out of the bundle, and said, in as light a tone as I could possibly assume: "Come, come, don't let my candles be the cause of hard words between you.

Tie this ragged old thing round them with a bit of string, and I shall carry them home quite comfortably." The man seemed disposed to insist on the stout paper being produced; but the woman, as if she was glad of an opportunity of spiting him, snatched the candles away, and tied them up in a moment in the torn old cravat.

I was afraid he would have struck her before my face, he seemed in such a fury; but, fortunately, another customer came in, and obliged him to put his hands to peaceable and proper use.
"Quite a bundle of all-sorts on the opposite counter there," I said to the woman, as I paid her for the candles.
"Yes, and all hoarded up for sale by a poor creature with a lazy brute of a husband, who lets his wife do all the work while he spends all the money," answered the woman, with a malicious look at the man by her side.
"He can't surely have much money to spend, if his wife has no better work to do than picking up rags," said I.
"It isn't her fault if she hasn't got no better," says the woman, rather angrily.

"She's ready to turn her hand to anything.

Charing, washing, laying-out, keeping empty houses--nothing comes amiss to her.