while Brown and Jones were still
busy with the goods, and Mrs. Jones was measuring out to the
shop-girls yards of Magenta ribbon, short by an inch, Robinson again
walked down to the bridge. "The bleak wind of March makes me tremble
and shiver," said he to himself;--"but, 'Not the dark arch or the
black flowing river.'"

"Come, young man, move on," said a policeman to him. And he did move
on.

"But for that man I should have done it then," he whispered, in his
solitude, as he went to bed.

CHAPTER IX.

SHOWING HOW MR. ROBINSON WAS EMPLOYED ON THE OPENING DAY.

"Et tu, Brute?" were the words with which Mr. Brown was greeted at
six o'clock in the morning on that eventful day, when, at early dawn,
he met his young partner at Magenta House. He had never studied the
history of Caesar's death, but he understood the reproach as well as
any Roman ever did.

"It was your own doing, George," he said. "When she was swore at in
that way, and when you went away and left her--."

"It was she went away and left me."

"'Father,' said she when she came back, 'I shall put myself under the
protection of Mr. William Brisket.' What was I to do then? And when
he came himself, ten minutes afterwards, what was I to say to him? A
father is a father, George; and one's children is one's children."

"And they are to be married?"

"Not quite at once, George."

"No. The mercenary slaughterer will reject that fair hand at last,
unless it comes to him weighted with a money-bag. From whence are to
come those five hundred pounds without which William Brisket will not
allow your daughter to warm herself at his hearthstone?"

"As Jones has got the partnership, George, Maryanne's husband should
have something."

"Ah, yes! It is I, then,--I, as one of the partners of this house,
who am to bestow a dowry upon her who has injured me, and make happy
the avarice of my rival! Since the mimic stage first represented the
actions of humanity, no such fate as that has ever been exhibited as
the lot of man. Be it so. Bring hither the cheque-book. That hand
that was base enough to renounce her shall, with the same pen, write
the order for the money."

"No, George, no," said Mr. Brown. "I never meant to do that. Let him
have it--out of the profits."

"Ha!"

"I said in a month,--if things went well. Of course, I meant,--well
enough."

"But they'll lead you such a life as never man passed yet. Maryanne,
you know, can be bitter; very bitter