e opened his mouth, of course, on such a secret subject.

But twenty-four hours later, my 'Mother's Misfortune' was tokened to
Minnie Parable, and when the Dowager died, of course the money came
Rupert's way.

Strange to relate, it was a tolerable happy marriage as such things go.
They bore with one another pretty fair, and though you couldn't say it was
a homely pattern of home, and struck shivers into most folk as saw it, it
suited them. She never put no poison in Rupert's tea, and he never cut her
throat nor nothing like that. One child they had and no more; and he'll
get his grandfather's little lot when I don't want it, and John'll get
mine.

Rupert's child weren't one for a Christmas card exactly; but they set a
lot of store by him. Minnie saw through it, of course, when the Dowager
died; but she'd got Rupert which was what mattered to her, and she knew
the money was bound to goody all right in her husband's hands; which it
did do.

No. VII

STEADFAST SAMUEL

Samuel Borlase was one of them rare childer who see his calling fixed in
his little mind from cradlehood. We all know that small boys have big
ideas and that they fasten on the business of grown-up people and decide,
each according to his fancy, how he be going to help the world's work come
he grows up. This child hopes to be a chimney-sweep, and this longs to be
a railway-porter; scores trust to follow the sea and dozens wish for to be
a soldier, or a 'bus-conductor, a gardener, or a road-cleaner, as the
ambition takes 'em. My own grandson much desired to clean the roads,
because, as he pointed out, the men ordained for that job do little but
play about and smoke and spit and watch the traffic and pass the time of
day with one another. He also learned that they got three pounds a week of
public money for their fun, and half-holidays of a Saturday, so to his
youthful mind it seemed a likely calling.

But most often the ambitions of the human boys be like to change if their
parents get much luck in the world, so when you see a steadfast creature,
like Samuel Borlase, answer the call in his heart almost so soon as he can
walk and talk, you feel the rare event worth setting down.

When he was four year old (at any rate, so his mother will take her oath
upon) Sam said he'd be a policeman, and at twenty-four year old a
policeman he became. What's more, chance ordained that he should follow
his high calling in the village where he was born, and tho