put his hands in his pocket and whistled. He felt himself losing
patience; but, as he said afterwards, his father was in such an awful
rage that it was necessary for one of them to keep cool. So, as soon
as he recovered, he said, quite pleasantly,--

"Well, if you will not, you will not. We may take a horse to the
water, but we can't make him drink. And the time has not come yet for
a son to order his own father, though we are pretty well advanced
now."

"I think we are, Dick."

"I confess I am rather disappointed at not getting that letter. Mr.
Stansfield would have attached some importance to it; but I dare say I
shall get on with the old boy without it. I may as well tell you that
I shall accept anything he likes to offer me,--even if it be only a
clerkship at eighty pounds a year. After all, I am not worse off than
you were at my age. You began at the bottom of the ladder: so I need
not grumble."

"Do you mean to say," demanded his father, in a tone of grief, "that
you really intend to throw me over, and not only me, but all your
advantages, your prospects in life, for the sake of this girl?"

"I think it is you who are throwing me over," returned his son,
candidly. "Put yourself in my place. When you were a young man,
father, would you have given up my mother, if my grandfather had
wished you to do so?"

"The cases are different,--altogether different," was the angry
response. "I never would have married a dressmaker."

"There are dressmakers and dressmakers: but at least my _fiancee_ is a
gentlewoman," returned his son, hotly.

Dick meant nothing by this speech more than his words implied: he was
far too good-natured for an _arriere-pensee_. But his father chose to
consider himself insulted.

"You insolent young fellow!" he exclaimed, fuming. "Do you mean your
mother was not as good as Miss Nancy, any day? I never did believe in
those Challoners,--never, in spite of the mother's airs. I tell you
what, Dick, you are treating me shamefully; after all the money I have
wasted on you, to turn round on me in this way and talk about the
City. I wash my hands of you, sir. I will have nothing to do with
introductions: you may go your way, but you will never see a penny of
my money." And he walked on with a very black look indeed.

"All right," returned Dick. But he was not quite so cool now. "Thank
you for all you have done for me, and for letting me know your future
intentions. I am thinking it is a good thin