he son. "Do you lay down your terms before him,
substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,'
you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course
I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the
game'll go."

"And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?"

"Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard."

"But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't
know what her breeding has been."

"D---- her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow
for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered
hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in
their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we
must do the picking and choosing."

"She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees
to her to ask her."

"Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any
kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me.
What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all
belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me!
I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come
to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."

Mr. Mollett senior upon this merely shook his head. Perhaps the fact
was that he knew the sex somewhat better than his son. It had been
his fate during a portion of his life to live among people who were,
or ought to have been, gentlemen. He might have been such himself had
he not gone wrong in life from the very starting-post. But his son
had had no such opportunities. He did know and could know nothing
about ladies and gentlemen.

"You're mistaken, Aby," said the old man. "They'd never suffer you to
come among them on such a footing as that. They'd sooner go forth to
the world as beggars."

"Then, by G----! they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now,
father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he
finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass
of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry,
blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father
was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become
his master.

Shortly after this they were interrupted; and what further
conversation they had on the matter that night took place in their
joint bedroom