'What poor fun you think me; don't you, Mr Wrayburn? You may well look tired of me. But it's Saturday night, and I won't detain you.'

'That is to say, Miss Wren,' observed Eugene, quite ready to profit by the hint, 'you wish me to go?'

'Well, it's Saturday night,' she returned, and my child's coming home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn't see my child.'

'A doll?' said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an explanation.

But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, 'Her father,' he delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague. Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he does!

A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some maudlin apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by which he himself had just come out.

On the man's stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.

'Don't go away, Miss Hexam,' he said in a submissive manner, speaking thickly and with difficulty. 'Don't fly from unfortunate man in shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honour of your company. It ain't--ain't catching.'

Lizzie murmured that she had something to do in her own room, and went away upstairs.

'How's my Jenny?' said the man, timidly. 'How's my Jenny Wren, best of children, object dearest affections broken-hearted invalid?'

To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an attitude of command, replied with irresponsive asperity: 'Go along with you! Go along into your corner! Get into your corner directly!'

The wretched spectacle made as if he would have offered some remonstrance; but not venturing to resist the person of the house, thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of disgrace.

'Oh-h-h!' cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger, 'You bad old boy! Oh-h-h you naughty, wicked creature! WHAT do you mean by it?'

The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a scolding.

'I know your tricks and your manners,' cried Miss Wren. 'I know where you've been to!' (which indeed it did not require discernment to discover). 'Oh, you disgraceful old chap!'

The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.

'Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night,' pursued the person of the house, 'and all for this! WHAT do you mean by it?'

There was something in that emphasized 'What,' which absurdly frightened the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to it--even as soon as he saw that it was coming--he collapsed in an extra degree.

'I wish you had been taken up, and locked up,' said the person of the house.