“Well, I’ll be bitten then. There are times when I doubt if you’ve a proper sense of the place of music in the world and I tell you, this is one of them. If I’m vouchsafed the chance of giving that voice to mankind, I can do without having her gratitude thrown in. I’m doing this to please myself, my lad, and for the honor and the glory of Staithley Bridge. If she goes on to where I’m seeing her, she’ll wipe her boots on me in any case, but she’ll not wipe out the fame of Staithley that bred her.” “She was bred in Jackman’s Buildings. The beastliest slum in the town.” “They’ll go pilgrimages to her birthplace.” “You don’t believe that. Music’s as bad as drink for damaging a man’s sense of proportion.” Mary Ellen fidgeted, not with, the distress which may be supposed to assail a sensitive child who is discussed before her face, but because the conversation missed her main point. “When’s supper?” she asked. “After your bath,” said Walter, defying Tom with his eyes. Tom took up his hat again. “I’m off,” he said. “I’ve never found the cure for fools.” “All right,” said Walter. “In two years’ time, you’ll be the fool. I’m going bail for that Voice, and it’s neither here nor there that the Voice goes with a Bradshaw.” “Good night,” said Tom, and went. Mary Ellen “pulled bacon” at the door he closed behind him. “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls,” she said cheekily, but her impudence fell from her as he returned. She thought he had heard her and had come to inflict punishment. But Tom had not heard. “Walter,” he said, “if you value my friendship, there’s a thing you’ll not deny me.” “Well?” “I pay half. Let’s be fools together.” Walter sucked meditatively at an empty pipe. “Aye,” he said, “we’re both bachelors and,” holding out the hand of partnership, “I’m generous by nature, Tom. Tell Mrs. Butterworth I want her as you go downstairs.” CHAPTER III--MARY ELLEN MARY ELLEN heard with trepidation that there was a Mrs. Butterworth on the premises; she was old enough to know that it was one thing to “get round” two men, and another to cozen a woman. Her cozening had not been much more culpable than that of any one who sees a chance and determines not to fritter it away by understatement. It was not quite true, it was a propagandist gloss upon the truth, to say that she slept out on the brickfields, implying that she was homeless when she had sleeping rights in the fourth part of a bed in Jackman’s Buildings. But there had been no dissembling, no thought to please Tom Bradshaw, when she said she hated the Hepplestalls. She hated them because she hated the misery in which she lived and because they were the cause of her living in misery. That was her implicit belief and the guile had not been in stating it but in denying it when Tom commanded her denial.