ents
excessively.

"But I do sympathise with you," she said after listening to an
immoderately long and peevish harangue; "and I should advise you to
go to your father, as a first step, and ask to be paid a very small
salary for the work you do--enough to set up in lodgings alone. At
present you are pauperising yourself."

Bob did not quite understand--so she explained:

"You are twenty-one, and still receiving food and lodging from your
parents as a dole. At your age, if a man receives anything at all from
father or mother, he should be earning it as a right."

She spoke impatiently, and longed to add that he was also
impoverishing his intellect. She felt a touch of contempt for him; but
a touch of contempt may go with love, and, indeed, competent observers
have held that this mixture makes the very finest cement. Certain it
is that when Bob answered pathetically, "But I don't want to leave
this roof, I--I _can't_, Miss Ormiston, you know!" she missed her
opportunity of pointing out that this confession stultified every one
of his previous utterances. She began a sentence, indeed, but broke
off, with her grey eyes fixed on the ground; and when at length she
lifted them, Bob felt something take him by the throat. The few
words he proceeded to blurt out stunned him much as if a grenade had
exploded close at hand. But when Miss Ormiston burst into tears and
declared she must go upstairs at once and pack her box, he recovered,
and, looking about, found the aspect of the world bewilderingly
changed. There were valleys where hills had stood a moment before.

"I'll go at once and tell my father," he said, drawing a full breath
and looking like the man he was for the moment.

"And," sobbed Miss Ormiston, "I'll go at once and pack my box."

Herein she showed foresight, for as soon as Bob's interview with his
father was over, she was commanded to leave the premises in time to
catch the early train next morning.

Then the Haydon family sat down and talked to Bob.

They began by pooh-poohing the affair. Then, inconsequently, they
talked of disgrace, and of scratching his name out of the Family
Bible, and said they would rather follow him to his grave than see him
married to Miss Ormiston. Lastly, Mrs. Haydon asked Bob who had nursed
him, and taught him to walk, and read and know virtue when he saw it.
Bob, in the words of the poet, replied, "My mother." "Very well then,"
said Mrs. Haydon.

After forty-eight hours of t