“He affronted me.” “What about?” “Never you mind. Don't let us say anything more about it, darling. It is a pity, a sad pity--he was a good friend of mine once.” He paused, entered what had passed in his diary, and then sat down, with a gentle expression of sadness on his manly features. Rosa hung about him, soft and pitying, till it cleared away, at all events for the time. Next day they went together to clear the goods Rosa had purchased. Whilst the list was being made out in the office, in came the fair-haired boy, with a ten-pound note in his very hand. Rosa caught sight of it, and turned to the auctioneer, with a sweet, pitying face: “Oh! sir, surely you will not take all that money from him, poor child, for a rickety old chair.” The auctioneer stared with amazement at her simplicity, and said, “What would the vendors say to me?” She looked distressed, and said, “Well, then, really we ought to raise a subscription, poor thing!” “Why, ma'am,” said the auctioneer, “he isn't hurt: the article belonged to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn't on good terms; so he demanded a public sale. She will get back four pun ten out of it.” Here the clerk put in his word. “And there's five pounds paid, I forgot to tell you.” “Oh! left a deposit, did he?” “No, sir. But the laughing hyena gave you five pounds at the end of the sale.” “The laughing hyena, Mr. Jones?” “Oh! beg pardon; that is what we call him in the room. He has got such a curious laugh.” “Oh! I know the gent. He is a retired doctor. I wish he'd laugh less and buy more: and HE gave you five pounds towards the young gentleman's arm-chair! Well, I should as soon have expected blood from a flint. You have got five pounds to pay, sir: so now the chair will cost your mamma ten shillings. Give him the order and the change, Mr. Jones.” Christopher and Rosa talked this over in the room whilst the men were looking out their purchases. “Come,” said Rosa; “now I forgive him sneering at me; his heart is not really hard, you see.” Staines, on the contrary, was very angry. “What!” he cried, “pity a boy who made one bad bargain, that, after all, was not a very bad bargain; and he had no kindness, nor even common humanity, for my beautiful Rosa, inexperienced as a child, and buying for her husband, like a good, affectionate, honest creature, amongst a lot of sharpers and hard-hearted cynics--like himself.” “It WAS cruel of him,” said Rosa, altering her mind in a moment, and half inclined to cry. This made Christopher furious. “The ill-natured, crotchety, old--the fact is, he is a misogynist.” “Oh, the wretch!” said Rosa warmly. “And what is that?” “A woman-hater.” “Oh! is that all? Why, so do I--after that Florence Cole. Women are mean, heartless things. Give me men; they are loyal and true.” “All of them?” inquired Christopher, a little satirically. “Read the papers.”