wards the door.

'However, I have made up my mind that I will become respectable in the
scale of society, and that I will not be dragged down by others. I have
done with my sister as well as with you. Since she cares so little for
me as to care nothing for undermining my respectability, she shall go
her way and I will go mine. My prospects are very good, and I mean to
follow them alone. Mr Headstone, I don't say what you have got upon your
conscience, for I don't know. Whatever lies upon it, I hope you will see
the justice of keeping wide and clear of me, and will find a consolation
in completely exonerating all but yourself. I hope, before many years
are out, to succeed the master in my present school, and the mistress
being a single woman, though some years older than I am, I might even
marry her. If it is any comfort to you to know what plans I may work out
by keeping myself strictly respectable in the scale of society, these
are the plans at present occurring to me. In conclusion, if you feel a
sense of having injured me, and a desire to make some small reparation,
I hope you will think how respectable you might have been yourself and
will contemplate your blighted existence.'

Was it strange that the wretched man should take this heavily to
heart? Perhaps he had taken the boy to heart, first, through some
long laborious years; perhaps through the same years he had found
his drudgery lightened by communication with a brighter and more
apprehensive spirit than his own; perhaps a family resemblance of face
and voice between the boy and his sister, smote him hard in the gloom
of his fallen state. For whichsoever reason, or for all, he drooped his
devoted head when the boy was gone, and shrank together on the floor,
and grovelled there, with the palms of his hands tight-clasping his hot
temples, in unutterable misery, and unrelieved by a single tear.

Rogue Riderhood had been busy with the river that day. He had fished
with assiduity on the previous evening, but the light was short, and
he had fished unsuccessfully. He had fished again that day with better
luck, and had carried his fish home to Plashwater Weir Mill Lock-house,
in a bundle.

Chapter 8

A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER

The dolls' dressmaker went no more to the business-premises of Pubsey
and Co. in St Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her (as she
supposed) the flinty and hypocritical character of Mr Riah. She often
moralized over her work on t