don't! I'll have her life! She met me last
night and gave me this black eye as you see--she did! It's 'ard on a
feller.'

'You mean to say as she '_it_ you?' cried Pennyloaf.

Bob chuckled, thrust his hands into his pockets, spread himself out.
His own superiority was so gloriously manifest.

'Suppose _you_ try it on with _me_, Penny!' he cried.

'You'd give me something as I should remember,' she answered, smirking,
the good little slavey.

'Shouldn't wonder if I did,' assented Bob.

Mr. Bartley's pressing hunger was satisfied with some bread and butter
and a cup of tea. Whilst taking a share of the meal, Bob brought a
small box on to the table; it had a sliding lid, and inside were
certain specimens of artistic work with which he was wont to amuse
himself when tired of roaming the streets in jovial company. Do you
recollect that, when we first made Bob's acquaintance, he showed Sidney
Kirkwood a medal of his own design and casting? His daily work at
die-sinking had of course supplied him with this suggestion, and he
still found pleasure in work of the same kind. In days before
commercialism had divorced art and the handicrafts, a man with Bob's
distinct faculty would have found encouragement to exercise it for
serious ends; as it was, he remained at the semi-conscious stage with
regard to his own aptitudes, and cast leaden medals just as a way of
occupying his hands when a couple of hours hung heavy on them. Partly
with the thought of amusing the dolorous Jack, yet more to win
laudation, he brought forth DOW a variety of casts and moulds and
spread them on the table. His latest piece of work was a medal in high
relief bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded
with a wreath. Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he
drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his
father foam at the mouth. True, he might have found subjects
artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, and the
English people.

Jack Bartley, having dried his eyes and swallowed his bread and butter,
considered the medal with much attention.

'I say,' he remarked at length, 'will you give me this, Bob?'

'I don't mind, You can take it if you like.'

'Thanks!'

Jack wrapped it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket, and before long
rose to take leave of his friends.

'I only wish I'd got a wife like you,' he observed at the door, as he
saw Pennyloaf bending over the two child