alled. 'I thought as he was in prison,' said Ruby.

'What should they keep him in prison for?' said Mrs Pipkin. 'He hasn't
done nothing as he oughtn't to have done. That young man was dragging
you about as far as I can make out, and Mr Crumb just did as anybody
ought to have done to prevent it. Of course they weren't going to keep
him in prison for that. Prison indeed! It isn't him as ought to be in
prison.'

'And where is he now, aunt?'

'Gone down to Bungay to mind his business, and won't be coming here
any more of a fool's errand. He must have seen now pretty well what's
worth having, and what ain't. Beauty is but skin deep, Ruby.'

'John Crumb'd be after me again to-morrow, if I'd give him
encouragement,' said Ruby. 'If I'd hold up my finger he'd come.'

'Then John Crumb's a fool for his pains, that's all; and now do you go
about your work.' Ruby didn't like to be told to go about her work,
and tossed her head, and slammed the kitchen door, and scolded the
servant girl, and then sat down to cry. What was she to do with
herself now? She had an idea that Felix would not come back to her
after the treatment he had received;--and a further idea that if he did
come he was not, as she phrased it to herself, 'of much account.' She
certainly did not like him the better for having been beaten, though,
at the time, she had been disposed to take his part. She did not
believe that she would ever dance with him again. That had been the
charm of her life in London, and that was now all over. And as for
marrying her,--she began to feel certain that he did not intend it.
John Crumb was a big, awkward, dull, uncouth lump of a man, with whom
Ruby thought it impossible that a girl should be in love. Love and
John Crumb were poles asunder. But--! Ruby did not like wheeling the
perambulator about Islington, and being told by her aunt Pipkin to go
about her work. What Ruby did like was being in love and dancing; but
if all that must come to an end, then there would be a question
whether she could not do better for herself, than by staying with her
aunt and wheeling the perambulator about Islington.

Mrs Hurtle was still living in solitude in the lodgings, and having
but little to do on her own behalf, had devoted herself to the
interest of John Crumb. A man more unlike one of her own countrymen
she had never seen. 'I wonder whether he has any ideas at all in his
head,' she had said to Mrs Pipkin. Mrs Pipkin had replied that Mr
Cru