soon as he found that his hopes were vain, that the
Cheshire Cheese had been no stepping-stone to such honour, and that
his money had been spent for nothing, his mind reverted to its old
form. Strikes became to him the work of the devil, and unions were
once more the bane of trade.

"I suppose," said Ontario, looking up from his ledger, "if I work for
my bread by day, I may do as I please with my evenings. At any rate
I shall," he continued to say after pausing awhile. "It's best we
should understand each other, father." Moggs senior growled. At a
word his son would have been off from him, rushing about the country,
striving to earn a crust as a political lecturer. Moggs knew his son
well, and in truth loved him dearly. There was, too, a Miss Moggs
at home, who would give her father no peace if Ontario were turned
adrift. There is nothing in the world so cruel as the way in which
sons use the natural affections of their fathers, obtaining from
these very feelings a power of rebelling against authority! "You must
go to the devil if you please, I suppose," said Moggs senior.

"I don't know why you say that. What do I do devilish?"

"Them Unions is devilish."

"I think they're Godlike," said Moggs junior. After that they were
silent for a while, during which Moggs senior was cutting his nails
with a shoemaker's knife by the fading light of the evening, and
Moggs junior was summing up an account against a favoured aristocrat,
who seemed to have worn a great many boots, but who was noticeable to
Ontario, chiefly from the fact that he represented in Parliament the
division of the county in which Percycross was situated. "I thought
you was going to make it all straight by marrying that girl," said
Moggs senior.

Here was a subject on which the father and the son were in
unison;--and as to which the romantic heart of Miss Moggs, at home at
Shepherd's Bush, always glowed with enthusiasm. That her brother was
in love, was to her, of whom in truth it must be owned that she was
very plain, the charm of her life. She was fond of poetry, and would
read to her brother aloud the story of Juan and Haidee, and the
melancholy condition of the lady who was loved by the veiled prophet.
She sympathised with the false Queen's passion for Launcelot, and,
being herself in truth an ugly old maid very far removed from things
romantic, delighted in the affairs of the heart when they did not run
smooth. "O Ontario," she would say, "be true to