‘My father, as you desire to know, I will tell you. I would at once have realised what I could, and have cleared off the debt to Mr. Jordan.’ ‘Well, you may do that when the day comes,’ said the old manufacturer, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It is nothing to me what you do with the mill and the house and the land after I am’—he turned up his eyes to the dirty ceiling—’where the wicked cease from fiddling and no thieves break in and steal. I am not going to pay the money twice over. My obligation ended when the money went out of this house. I did more than I was required. I chastised my own son for taking it. What was seven years on Dartmoor? A flea-bite. Under the old law the rebellious son was stoned till he died. I suppose, now, you are hungry. Call the old crab; kick her, pinch her, till she understands, and let her give you something to eat. There are some scraps, I know, of veal-pie and cold potatoes. I think, by the way, the veal-pie is done. Don’t forget to ask a blessing before you fall-to on the cold potatoes.’ Then he rubbed his forehead and said, ‘Stay, I’ll go and rouse the old toad myself; you stay here. You are the best of my children. All the rest were a bad lot—too much of the strange blood in them.’ Whilst Mr. Babb is rousing his old housekeeper to produce some food, we will say a few words of the past history of the Babb family. Eve the first, Mr. Babb’s wife, had led a miserable life. She did not run away from him: she remained and poured forth the fiery love of her heart upon her children, especially on her eldest, a daughter, Eve, to whom she talked of her old life—its freedom, its happiness, its attractions. She died of a broken spirit on the birth of her third son, Walter. Then Eve, the eldest, a beautiful girl, unable to endure the bad temper of her father, the depressing atmosphere of the house, and the cares of housekeeping imposed on her, ran away after a travelling band of actors.