to take my place?"

"No one, sir," answered Andrew Blake firmly, for Mr. Beck's
unreasonableness provoked him. "I engaged a musician to play this
evening, but it was not in your place, for you had sent us word that you
could not appear."

"Where is he, I say?" continued Paul Beck sourly.

"Here he is," replied Blake, drawing toward our hero, who felt that he
was placed in an awkward position.

"Why, he's only a baby!" said Beck, surveying our hero contemptuously.

Philip's cheek flushed, and he, too, began to feel angry.

"He isn't as old as you are, Mr. Beck," said Andrew Blake manfully, "but
you'll find he understands his business."

"I certainly didn't expect you to get a child in my place," said Paul
Beck scornfully.

"I suppose a musician may know how to play, if he isn't sixty-five,"
said Miss Maria Snod-grass, who had listened indignantly to Mr. Beck's
contemptuous remarks about our hero, whose cause she so enthusiastically
championed.

Poor Mr. Beck! He was sensitive about his age, and nothing could
have cut him more cruelly than this exaggeration of it. He was really
fifty-five, and looked at least sixty, but he fondly flattered himself
that he looked under fifty. "Sixty-five!" he repeated furiously. "Who
says I am sixty-five?"

"Well, you look about that age," said Maria, with malicious pleasure.

"I shall have to live a good many years before I am sixty," said Paul
Beck angrily. "But that's either here nor there. You engaged me to play
to-night, and I am ready to do it."

Andrew Blake felt the difficulty of his position, but he did not mean to
desert the boy-musician whom he had engaged.

"Mr. Beck," said he, "we shall be glad to have you serve us on another
occasion, but to-night Mr. Gray, here, is engaged. You gave up the
engagement of your own accord, and that ended the matter, so far as you
are concerned."

"Do you refuse to let me play?" demanded Paul Beck, his pale cheek
glowing with anger and mortification.

"You understand why," answered Blake. "This young man is engaged, and we
have no right to break the engagement."

Philip, who had felt the embarrassment of his position, had meanwhile
made up his mind what to do. The three dollars he expected to earn were
important to him, but he didn't care to make trouble. He did not
doubt that his lodging and meals would be given him, and that would be
something. Accordingly, he spoke:

"I have been engaged, it is true," he said, "but if M