Sunday with its enforced quietude and inactivity was a burden to
him.
"Well, Miss Catharine, how are you to-day?"
"How did you know I was Miss Catharine? I hadn't spoken."
"Lord, Miss, I could tell. Though it's only about two years since I
lost my eyes, I could tell. I can make out people's footsteps.
What a lovely morning! What's going on now down below?"
Mike always took much interest in the wharves by the side of the
river.
"Why, Barnes's big lighter is loading malt."
"Ah! what, the new one with the yellow band round it! that's a
beautiful lighter, that is."
Mike had never seen it.
"What days do you dislike the most? Foggy, damp, dull, dark days?"
These foggy, damp, dull, dark days were particularly distasteful to
Catharine.
"No, Miss, I can't say I do, for, you know, I don't see them."
"Cold, bitter days?"
"They are a bit bad; but somehow I earn more money on cold days than
on any other; how it is I don't know."
"I hate the dust."
"Ah now! that IS unpleasant, but there again, Miss, I dodge it, and
it's my belief that it wouldn't worry people half so much if they
wouldn't look at it."
"How much have you earned this morning?"
"Not a penny yet, Miss, but it will come."
"I want two pairs of shoe-laces," and Miss Catharine, selecting two
pairs, put down a fourpenny-piece, part of her pocket-money, twice
the market value of the laces, and tripped over the bridge. When
she was at dinner with her father and mother that day she suddenly
said -
"Father, didn't Mike Catchpole lose his sight in our foundry?"
"Yes.
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