or. Her
dislike for Jenny was natural, and it is really impossible to blame very
severely--perhaps, if family feeling is to count, one ought not to blame
at all--her share in the events which were close at hand. It is, in
fact, rather difficult to see what else she could have done. If she had
a right to do it, it is perhaps setting up too high a standard to chide
her for a supposed pleasure in the work.

When we got home, Cartmell was waiting for Jenny, his round face
portentously lengthened by woe. He shook hands with sad gravity.

"What has happened?" she cried. "Not all my banks broken, Mr. Cartmell?"

"I'm very sorry to be troublesome, Miss Jenny, but I've come to make a
formal complaint against Powers. The fellow is doing you a lot of harm
and bringing discredit on the Institute in its very beginnings. He
neglects his work; that doesn't matter so much, there's not a great deal
to do yet; he spends the best part of the mornings lounging about
public-house bars, smoking and drinking and betting, and the best part
of his evenings doing the same, and ogling and flirting with the factory
girls into the bargain. He's a thorough bad lot."

Jenny's face had grown very serious. "I'm sorry. He's--he's an old
friend of mine!"

"That was what you said before. On the strength of it you gave him this
chance. Well, he's proved himself unworthy of it. You must get rid of
him--for the sake of the Institute and for your own sake, too."

"Get rid of him?" She looked oddly at Cartmell. "Isn't that rather
severe? Wouldn't a good scolding from you----?"

"From me? He practically tells me to mind my own business. If there are
any complaints, the fellow says, they'd better be addressed to you!" He
paused for a moment. "He gives the impression that you'd back him up
through thick and thin, and, what's more, he means to give it."

"What does he say to give that impression?" she asked quickly.

"He doesn't say much. It's a nod here, and a wink there--and a lot of
vaporing, so I'm told, about having known you when you were a girl."

"That's silly, but not very bad. Is that all?"

"No. When one of my clerks--Harrison, a very steady man--gave him a
friendly warning that he was going the right way about to lose his job,
he said something very insolent."

"What?" She was sitting very still, very intent.

"He laughed and said he thought you knew better than that. Said in the
way he said it, it--it came to claiming some sort of hold o