"Oh, that's a man's yarn, that is," said Blanche, "just to save themselves. We all know what men are--selfish brutes!" "Are you going to fetch me that terbaccer or are you not?" shouted Mr Gosling suddenly. "No, we aren't," said Millie, defiantly. "It isn't safe for girls to go about the streets, let alone the risk of infection." She had heard her father shout before, and she was not, as yet, at all intimidated. "Well, then, I say you are!" shouted her father. "Lazy, good-for-nothing creatures, the pair of you! 'Oose paid for everything you've eat or drunk or wore ever since you was born? An' now you won't even go an errand." Then, seeing the ready retort rising to his daughters' lips, he grew desperate, and, advancing a step towards them, he said savagely: "If you don't go, I'll find a way to make yer!" This was a new aspect, and the two girls were a little frightened. Natural instinct prompted them to scream for their mother. She had been listening at the top of the stairs, and she answered the call for help with great promptitude. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gosling," she said, on a high note. "The streets isn't safe for gels, as you know well enough; and why should my gels risk their lives for the sake of your nasty, dirty, wasteful 'abit of smoking, I should like to know?" Gosling's new-found courage was evaporating at the attack of this third enemy. He had been incensed against his daughters, but he had not yet overcome the habit of giving in to his wife, for the sake of peace. She had managed him very capably for a quarter of a century, but on the occasions when she had found it necessary to use what she called the "rough side of her tongue" she had demonstrated very clearly which of the two was master. "I should have thought I might 'a been allowed a little terbaccer," he said, resentfully. "'Oo risked his life to lay in provisions, I should like to know? An' it's a matter o' common knowledge as women is immune from this plague." "And Mrs Carter, three doors off, carried out dead of it the day before yesterday!" remarked Mrs Gosling, triumphantly. "Oh, 'ere and there, a case or two," replied her husband. "But not one woman to a thousand men gets it, as every one knows." "And how do you know I mightn't be the one?" asked Millie, bold now under her mother's protection. For that morning, the matter remained in abeyance; but Gosling, muttering and grumbling, nursed his injury and meditated on the fact that his daughters had been afraid of him. Things were altered now. There was no convention to tie his hands. He would work himself into a protective passion and defy the three of them. Also, there was an unopened bottle of whisky in the sideboard. Nevertheless, he would have put off the trial of his strength if he had had to seek an opportunity. He was, as yet, too civilized to take the initiative in cold blood.