h the cobbler-skeptic of the
Mile End Road got his way was this of the fees. It was a question of
conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their
remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead.
They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they
slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered
their parents and worried their teachers, and were happy as the Road was
long.

"Bother the school fees!" Peter retorted, vexed. "Mr. Cantercot's not
responsible for your children."

"I should hope not, indeed, Mr. Crowl," Mrs. Crowl said sternly. "I'm
ashamed of you." And with that she flounced out of the shop into the
back parlor.

"It's all right," Peter called after her soothingly. "The money'll be
all right, mother."

In lower circles it is customary to call your wife your mother; in
somewhat superior circles it is the fashion to speak of her as "the
wife" as you speak of "the Stock Exchange," or "the Thames," without
claiming any peculiar property. Instinctively men are ashamed of being
moral and domesticated.

Denzil puffed his cigarette, unembarrassed. Peter bent attentively over
his work, making nervous stabs with his awl. There was a long silence.
An organ-grinder played a waltz outside, unregarded; and, failing to
annoy anybody, moved on. Denzil lit another cigarette. The dirty-faced
clock on the shop wall chimed twelve.

"What do you think," said Crowl, "of Republics?"

"They are low," Denzil replied. "Without a Monarch there is no visible
incarnation of Authority."

"What! do you call Queen Victoria visible?"

"Peter, do you want to drive me from the house? Leave frivolousness to
women, whose minds are only large enough for domestic difficulties.
Republics are low. Plato mercifully kept the poets out of his. Republics
are not congenial soil for poetry."

"What nonsense! If England dropped its fad of Monarchy and became a
Republic to-morrow, do you mean to say that----?"

"I mean to say that there would be no Poet Laureate to begin with."

"Who's fribbling now, you or me, Cantercot? But I don't care a
button-hook about poets, present company always excepted. I'm only a
plain man, and I want to know where's the sense of givin' any one person
authority over everybody else?"

"Ah, that's what Tom Mortlake used to say. Wait till you're in power,
Peter, with trade-union money to control, and working men bursting to
give you flying