ng to
make that mess of himself.'

'It's an old waistcoat, Mrs. Poole,' protested Jack. 'I keep it on
purpose.'

'Oh, you do! Well, mind it don't go through to your shirt, that's all.
Now run away home, Jacky, there's a good boy.'

'He shan't be five minutes more,' interposed Luke. 'I'm coming down
myself in five minutes.'

'Well, supper's waiting. And here's Miss Trent here, too. Not that
that'll make you come any quicker; perhaps I'd better not have
mentioned it.'

Jane pressed her lips together after speaking, and withdrew.

'Don't you like Miss Trent, Mr. Ackroyd?' Jack inquired, when they were
left alone. He was, as I have said, a sharp-eyed boy, and Luke could
have given wonderful reports of his keenness of brain. It is often
thus. The father has faculties which never ripen in himself, and which,
as likely as not, cause him a life's struggle and unrest; they come to
maturity and efficiency in the son. What more pathetic, rightly
considered, than the story of those fathers whose lives are but a
preparation for the richer lives of their sons? Poor Bunce, fighting
with his ignorance and his passions, unable to overcome either,
obstinate in holding on to a half-truth, catching momentary glimpses of
a far-away ideal--what did it all mean, but that his boy should stand
where _he_ had been thrown, should see light where _his_ eyes had
striven vainly against the fog! Perhaps there is compensation to the
parent if he live to see the lad conquering; but what of those who fall
into silence when all is still uncertain, when they recognise in their
offspring an hereditary weakness and danger as often as a rare gleam of
new promise? One would bow reverently and sadly by the graves of such
men.

It was a happy thought of Ackroyd's to give the boy lessons in
chemistry. To teach is often the surest way of learning. In explaining
simple things, Luke often enough discovered for the first time his own
ignorance. In very fact, the greater part of the past two years had
been spent by him in making discoveries of that nature--long before he
thought of new combinations of oleaginous matter. By degrees he had
come to suspect that, as regarded the employment of his leisure hours,
he was very decidedly on the wrong track. Curiously, for Ackroyd as
well as for Bunce, there had arisen a measure of evil from Walter
Egremont's aspiring work. Luke, though not to such a violent degree as
Bunce, was led to offer opposition to everything