Tom saw and interpreted the hopeless glance. “No, no,” said he, relenting, “not quite so bad as that, neither; I wouldn’t strip the gown off your back, Rachel, not if it was ever so; I couldn’t bear to see you, that was once so respectable, going about all in rags. We _might_ get on, too,” added he, brightening up, with an expression of desperate cunning in his bad eye--“we might get money--ay, plenty of it--if you were only like the rest: you’re too mealy-mouthed, Mrs. Blacke, that’s where it is.” “O Tom, what would you have me do?” exclaimed his wife, bursting afresh into tears; “we’ve been honest as yet through it all, and I’ve borne and borne because we _were_ honest. I’d work upon my bare knees for you and the child--I’d starve and never complain _myself_, if I hadn’t a morsel in the cupboard; but I’d keep my honesty, Tom, I’d keep my honesty, for when _that’s_ gone, all’s gone together.” “Will your honesty put decent clothes on your back, missus?” rejoined Tom, who did not see that the article in question was by any means so indispensable; “will your honesty put a joint down before the fire, such as we used to sit down to every day, when we was first man and wife, and lived respectable? Will your honesty furnish a bellyful for this poor little beggar, that’s whining now on my knee for a bit to eat?” Gingham began to relent at this consideration, and Tom pursued his advantage: “Besides, it’s not as if it was to do anybody any harm; there’s Miss Blanche got more than she knows what to do with, and the young gentleman--he’s away at the wars. _Honesty_, indeed! if honesty’s the game, you’ve a right to your share, what Mrs. Kettering intended you should have. I think I ought to know the law; and the law’s on our side, and the justice too. Ah! Rachel, you used not to be so difficult to come round once,” concluded Tom, trying the _tender_ tack, when he had exhausted all his other arguments; and recalling to his wife’s mind, as he intended it should do, their early days of courtship, and the carriage of a certain brown-paper parcel by the sea-shore. But Gingham felt she had right on her side; and when we can indulge the spirit of contradiction never dormant in our natures, and fight under the banner of truth at the same time, it is too great a luxury for mortal man, or especially mortal woman, to forego, so Gingham was game to the last. “No, Tom, _no_!” she said, steadily and with emphasis, “I _won’t_ do it, so don’t ask me, and there’s an end of it!”