"No, my dear. We like you to have tea with us. We can't spare you."
"C'n I go, ma? C'n I go? Willy Spratt's waitin' outside."
Willy Spratt was the son of the cutler and his wife, across the way. Very good customers of Mrs. Day, very good people; but--
"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Potter, Franky," Deleah said to divert the child's mind. "You know Mrs. Potter, sir. Where are your manners?"
"Quite 'ell, I thank ye," said Franky without a glance in the direction of the good lady in question, who had not the intention to inquire for his health. "C'n I go, ma? Willy's waitin' outside; and c'n I go?"
"Oh go!" his poor mother said. "Go! But, Franky dear, _don't_ pull your cap in that hideous fashion over your eyes."
But Franky had ducked his head from beneath his mother's hand, dashed round the counter, and was away to the society of the expectant Willy.
In an interregnum of peace between the going and coming of customers Mrs. Day moaned to Deleah over the grievous subject of Franky's deterioration. "He even brushes his hair, and wears his cap, in the fashion of that dreadful Willy Spratt. Being so young he does not stand a chance. He must grow into just a common little boy."
"Never, mama!" Deleah, the unfailing comforter, declared. "Why, Franky looks like a creature of a different mould from Willy Spratt. Franky, with that dear little nose of his, is distinctly aristocratic. Don't laugh! He is indeed. You and he are, you know; and any one can see it."
"Nonsense, my dear," the mother said, but smiled and was comforted on that score. "It is inevitable, I suppose," she went on, "that we fall into the way of speech of those around us. But it vexes me. Have you noticed that even Bessie habitually speaks of Mr. Gibbon now without the 'Mr.'? 'Gibbon' said this or 'Gibbon' did that. I don't like to mention it to her, but it offends my ear."
"I wouldn't say anything," Deleah counselled. "We know that Bessie is--so very easily upset."
"Poor Bessie!" the mother said. Both of them had a vision of Bessie drumming her heels on the floor in the hysterics into which a few thwarting words would throw her. "What about Bessie's love affairs?" Mrs. Day presently asked. "I should be so thankful to see Bessie with a home of her own. She would be so happy, married. But--?"