maid,"
said Sam; "or else do as you like, and don't blame me if you're sorry
for it."

Mrs Shuckleford knew it was no use trying to extract any more lucid
information from her legal offspring, and did not try, but she made
another effort to soften his heart with regard to the Widow Cruden and
her son.

"After all they're gentlefolk in trouble, as we might be," said she,
"and they do behave very nice at the short-'and class to Jemima."

"Gentlefolk or not," said Sam decisively, spreading a slice of toast
with jam, "I tell you you'd better draw off, ma--and Jim must chuck up
the class. I'm not going to have her mixing with them."

"But the child's 'eart would break, Sam, if--"

"Let it break. She cares no more about shorthand than she does about
county courts. It's all part of her craze to tack herself on that lot.
She's setting her cap at _him_ while she's making up to his ma; any flat
might see that; but she's got to jack up the whole boiling now--there.
We needn't say any more about it."

And, having finished his tea, Mr Samuel Shuckleford went down to his
"club" to take part in a debate on "Cruelty to Animals."

Now the worthy captain's widow, Mrs Shuckleford, had lived long enough
in this world to find that human nature is a more powerful law even than
parental obedience; she therefore took to heart just so much of her
son's discourse as fitted with the one, and overlooked just so much as
exacted the latter. In other words, she was ready to believe that
Reginald Cruden was a "bad lot," but she was not able to bring herself
on that account to desert her neighbour at the time of her trouble.

Accordingly that same evening, while Samuel was pleading eloquently on
behalf of our dumb fellow-creatures, and Jemima, having recovered from
her tears, was sitting abstractedly over a shorthand exercise in her own
bedroom, Mrs Shuckleford took upon herself to pay a friendly call at
Number 6.

It happened to be one of Horace's late evenings, so that Mrs Cruden was
alone. She was lying wearily on the uncomfortable sofa, with her eyes
shaded from the light, dividing her time between knitting and musing,
the latter occupation receiving a very decided preference.

"Pray don't get up," said Mrs Shuckleford, the moment she entered. "I
only looked in to see 'ow you was. You're looking bad, Mrs Cruden."

"Thank you, I am quite well," said Mrs Cruden, "only a little tired."

"And down in your spirits, too; and well you