she cried, completely ignoring his words.

"Looks like it, don't it? I say, how jolly white you've got."

"Have you asked for a holiday, Percy!" she said, responding to his
caress, and noting at the same time how tall and manly he was growing,
for he was passing from the tall, thin boy into the big, bony,
ill-shaped young man, with a hoarse voice and a faint trace of down upon
his lip and chin.

At the same time she noted a peculiarly fast, flashy style of dress that
he had adopted, his trousers fitting tightly to his legs, his hair being
cut short, and his throat wrapped in a common, showy-looking tie,
fastened with a horseshoe pin.

"Have I asked for a what?" he said, changing countenance a little--"a
holiday? Well, yes, I suppose I have--a long one. Eh, ma?"

He looked at Mrs Thorne as if asking for help, and she responded at
once.

"I wouldn't let Percy come into the school, my dear, but let him wait
till you came out," she said. "The fact is, Hazel, my dear, the poor
boy has been so put upon and ill-used at the place where he consented to
act as clerk, that at last, in spite of his earnest desire to stay there
for both our sakes, my dear--I think I am expressing your feelings,
Percy?"

"Right as the mail!" he replied quickly.

"He felt that as a gentleman he could submit no longer, and so he has
left and come down."

"Left and come down?" said Hazel mechanically, as she thought of the
narrowness of her present income, and the impracticability of making it
feed another hearty appetite as well as those at home.

"Yes; they were such a set of cads, you know," said Percy, sticking a
cheap glass in one eye and holding it there by the brow. "Regular set
of cads, from the foreman down to the lowest clerk."

"Did you have a quarrel with your employer, Percy?" said Hazel gravely.

"I don't know what you mean by having a quarrel with my employer,
Hazel," replied the boy. "I told him that he was a confounded cad, and
that I wouldn't stand any more of his nonsense."

"What had you been doing, Percy?"

"Doing?--doing? Why, nothing at all. It was impossible to get on with
such a set of cads."

"There must have been some reason for the quarrel," said Hazel.

"Really, my dear, this is very foolish of you," cried Mrs Thorne
quickly. "You do not understand these things. For my part, I think
Percy has done quite right. It was bad enough for the poor boy to have
to submit to the degradation of going to