enough this feeling
expressed itself one day in the form of a rebuke to Bob for neglecting
Pennyloaf--Pennyloaf, whom John had always declined to recognise.

'I hear no good of your goin's on,' remarked Hewett, on a casual
encounter in the street. 'A married man ought to give up the kind of
company as you keep.'

'I do no harm,' replied Bob bluntly. 'Has my wife been complaining to
you?'

'I've nothing to do with her; it's what I'm told.'

'By Kirkwood, I suppose? You'd better not have made up with him again,
if he's only making mischief.'

'No, I didn't mean Kirkwood.'

And John went his way. Odd thing, was it not, that this embittered
leveller should himself practise the very intolerance which he reviled
in people of the upper world. For his refusal to recognise Pennyloaf he
had absolutely no grounds, save--I use the words advisedly--an
aristocratic prejudice. Bob had married deplorably beneath him; it was
unpardonable, let the character of the girl be what it might. Of course
you recognise the item in John Hewett's personality which serves to
explain this singular attitude. But, viewed generally, it was one of
those bits of human inconsistency over which the observer smiles, and
which should be recommended to good people in search of arguments for
the equality of men.

After that little dialogue, Bob went home in a disagreeable temper. To
begin with, his mood had been ruffled, for the landlady at his
lodgings--the fourth to which he had removed this year--was 'nasty'
about a week or two of unpaid rent, and a man on whom he had counted
this evening for the payment of a debt was keeping out of his way. He
found Pennyloaf sitting on the stairs with her two children, as usual;
poor Pennyloaf had not originality enough to discover new expressions
of misery, and that one bright idea of donning her best dress was a
single instance of ingenuity. In obedience to Jane Snowdon, she kept
herself and the babies and the room tolerably clean, but everything was
done in the most dispirited way.

'What are you kicking about here for?' asked Bob impatiently. 'That's
how that kid gets its cold--of course it is!--Ger out!'

The last remark was addressed to the elder child, who caught at his
legs as he strode past. Bob was not actively unkind to the little
wretches for whose being he was responsible; he simply occupied the
natural position of unsophisticated man to children of that age, one of
indifference, or impatience. The