occasion was a festive
one, for some reasons: I forget why. It may have been my birthday, or
somebody else's. "Twopence," says he. "Then," says I, "just draw me a
glass of that, if you please, with a good head to it." The landlord
looked at me, in return, over the bar, from head to foot, with a
strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked
round the screen and said something to his wife, who came out from
behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me.
Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire
Terrace. The landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar
window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in
some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They
asked me a good many questions, as what my name was, how old I was,
where I lived, how I was employed, etc., etc. To all of which, that I
might commit nobody, I invented appropriate answers. They served me
with the ale, though I suspect it was not the strongest on the
premises; and the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door and
bending down, gave me a kiss that was half-admiring and
half-compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.

DELIVERANCE AT LAST

At last, one day, my father and the relative so often mentioned
quarrelled; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my father
to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very fiercely. It
was about me. It may have had some backward reference, in part, for
anything I know, to my employment at the window. All I am certain of
is that, soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin (he was a
sort of cousin by marriage) told me he was very much insulted about me;
and that it was impossible to keep me after that. I cried very much,
partly because it was so sudden, and partly because in his anger he was
violent about my father, though gentle to me. Thomas, the old soldier,
comforted me, and said he was sure it was for the best. With a relief
so strange that it was like oppression, I went home.

My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day.
She brought home a request for me to return next morning, and a high
character of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I
should go back no more, and should go to school. I do not write
resentfully or angrily, for I know how all these things have worked
together to make me what I am, but I never