wo
there existed a queer comradeship, which had been growing for more than
two years, so that the bald, rotund, red-faced goldsmith had come to
regard the shock-headed, rat-faced apprentice more as a son than as an
assistant; whilst Jake would say to the youth of his "push," "Huh! none
o' yer bashin' an' knockin' about fer me--the boss an' me's chums. Huh!
you should be in _my_ boots--we have our pint between us reg'lar at
eleven, just like pals."

Picking up the ring with a pair of tweezers, the master-jeweller first
examined its stone--a diamond--through a powerful lens. Next, with a
small feather he took up some little bits of chopped gold from where
they lay mixed with borax and water upon a piece of slate; these he
placed deftly where the gold hoop was weak; over the top of them he laid
a delicate slip of gold, and bound the whole together with wire as thin
as thread. This done, he put the jewel upon a piece of charred wood,
thrust the end of his blow-pipe into the flame of the gas-burner, which
he pulled towards him, and with three or four gentle puffs through the
pipe the mend was made. The goldsmith threw the ring in the "pickle," a
green, deadly-looking chemical in an earthenware pot upon the floor.

Tresco was what the doctors call "a man of full habit." He ate largely,
drank deeply, slept heavily, but, alas! he was a bachelor. There was no
comfortable woman in the room at the back of his workshop to call in
sweet falsetto, "Benjamin, come to dinner! Come at once: the steak's
getting cold!" As he used to say, "This my domicile lacks the female
touch--there's too much tobacco-ashes an' cobwebs about it: the women
seem kind o' scared to come near, as if I might turn out to be a dog
that bites."

The ring being pickled, Benjamin fished it out of the green liquid and
washed it in a bowl of clean water. A little filing and scraping, a
little rubbing with emery-paper, and the goldsmith burnished the yellow
circlet till it shone bright and new.

"Who knows?" he exclaimed, holding up the glistening gem, "who knows but
it is the ring of the future Mrs. T.? Lord love her, I have forty-eight
pairs of socks full of holes, all washed and put away, waiting for
her to darn. Think of the domestic comfort of nearly fifty pairs of
newly-darned socks; with her sitting, stitching, on one side of the
fire, and saying, 'Benjamin, these ready-made socks are no good: _I_
must knit them for you in future,' and me, on the other sid