“Nothing, Rachel; there are only four more years to wait now. That pulled off, we shall be able to retire comfortably.” “We should not do badly if we gave it up now.” “By no means, Rachel; but as he will be worth to us at least ten thousand pounds, it will pay very well to go on another four years. Of course I shall make my bargain with him, and get a deed drawn up and signed, before I tell him who he is, and I am sure he would give his ears to be a gentleman.” “It was certainly a good idea of yours, Robert, and does you great credit. Suppose, in honour of the occasion, we have two bottles of that old port, instead of one.” CHAPTER XI. AN EVENING AT THE HOLLS’. It is evening at the Holls’. The children are in bed, the place is, as Mrs. Holl says, “tidied up,” and John is smoking his pipe with several visitors who have dropped in. There is policeman A 56, and Perkins; William Holl, and his wife too, have come over, for this does not happen to be one of his nights at the meeting. Lastly, there is Mr. Barton. That person, however, was certainly a less welcome guest than the others, for John Holl did not like the man; why he could hardly say, but he knew he did not, and was at no particular pains to conceal his aversion. Mr. Barton never seemed to notice John’s rebuffs, but periodically, perhaps once in six months, would come in and smoke a pipe with him. John Holl had very often asked his wife, on whose good sense he much relied, What that chap Barton meant by coming to see them? He seemed comfortably off, and why he should come in twice a year to smoke a pipe was a thing he could not understand. But for once, Sarah was quite unable to enlighten her husband. The matter had fairly puzzled both John and his wife. Many years had passed since John Holl first made Mr. Barton’s acquaintance. It happened thus: John had no children then, and was much younger and not quite so steady as he had since become. John’s temptations, too, were many; for in the discharge of his occupation as dustman, he had sundry mugs of beer offered to him in the course of the day. So it chanced that one particularly warm summer afternoon, being oppressed by the heat, John accepted several of these offerings, and had felt his thirst noways abated thereby. After his work was done, therefore, he went into a public-house, to endeavour still further to wash the dust from his throat. Here, somehow or other—he never could exactly recall the cause—he became involved in a fierce dispute with a man who was also engaged in quenching a devouring thirst. To settle this difference of opinion, they adjourned into the back-yard. The end of this was, that John Holl, who had drunk more than his opponent, got considerably the worst of it. The first thing he remembered afterwards was, that he was sitting on the ground, supported by Mr. Barton. This good Samaritan had entered the public-house just