128 THE LAND OF PLUCK

“Mr. Butcher, do you know where the old apple-woman
lives 2?”

“Well,” said the butcher, pausing to wipe his cleaver
on his big apron, “she does n’t exactly dwe anywhere.
But, as the poor thing has neither kith nor kin to help
her, why, for the past year or so I’ve just let her tumble
herself in under a shed in my yard yonder. She ’s got an
old chopping-bench for a table, and a pile of straw for a
bed, and that ’s all her housekeeping.”

“And does n’t she have anything to eat but apples?”
asked Wisk, much distressed.

“Bless your simple heart!” said the butcher, laugh-
ing, “she can’t afford to eat her apples. No, no. She
keeps the breath in her body mostly with black bread
and scraps.”

“Scraps ?”

“Yes, meat-scraps. I save ’em for her out of the trim-
min’s. But what are you wantin’ of her so particular ?
Did you come to invite her to court 2”

“Td like to see her for a moment,” said Wisk, shrink-
ing from his coarse laugh.

“Well,” answered the butcher, beginning to chop again,
“the surest way of seeing her is to go to the corner and
buy an apple.”

“ But she is n’t there.”

“Not there? That’s uncommon. Well,”—pointing
back over his shoulder with his cleaver—*go down the
alley here, alongside the shop; steer clear of old Beppo in
his kennel, he ’s ugly sometimes; then go past the pig-
sties and the skin-heaps, and cross over by the cattle-stalls ;