“Some other occupa-ation!” he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes, and holding up both his hands. “Indeed we think so, Mr. Molloy.” “And you’ve read it?” “Every word of it;--on our honour.” “And you won’t have it?” “Well;--no, Mr. Molloy, certainly we cannot take it.” “Ye reject my article on the Five-o’clock Tay-table!” Looking into his face as he spoke, we could not but be certain that its rejection was to him as astonishing as would have been its acceptance to the readers of the magazine. He put his hand up to his head and stood wondering. “I suppose ye’d better choose your own subject for yourself,” he said, as though by this great surrender on his own part he was getting rid of all the difficulty on ours. “Mr. Molloy,” we began, “we may as well be candid with you----” “I’ll tell you what it is,” said he, “I’ve taken such a liking to you there’s nothing I won’t do to plaise ye. I’ll just put it in my pocket, and begin another for ye as soon as the children have had their bit of dinner.” At last we did succeed, or thought that we succeeded, in making him understand that we regarded the case as being altogether hopeless, and were convinced that it was beyond his powers to serve us. “And I’m to be turned off like that,” he said, bursting into open tears as he threw himself into a chair and hid his face upon the table. “Ah! wirra, wirra, what’ll I do at all? Sure, and didn’t I think it was fixed as firm between us as the Nelson monument? When ye handselled me with the money, didn’t I think it was as good as done and done?” I begged him not to regard the money, assuring him that he was welcome to the sovereign. “There’s my wife’ll be brought to bed any day,” he went on to say, “and not a ha’porth of anything ready for it! ’Deed, thin, and the world’s hard. The world’s very hard!” And this was he who had talked to me about Constantinople and New York at the baths, and had made me believe that he was a well-informed, well-to-do man of the world! Even now we did not suspect that he was lying to us. Why he should be such as he seemed to be was a mystery; but even yet we believed in him after a fashion. That he was sorely disappointed and broken-hearted because of his wife, was so evident to us, that we offered him another sovereign, regarding it as the proper price of that butter-boat of benevolence which we had permitted ourselves to use. But he repudiated our offer. “I’ve never begged,” said he, “and, for myself, I’d sooner starve. And Mary Jane would sooner starve than I should beg. It will be best for us both to put an end to ourselves and to have done with it.” This was very melancholy; and as he lay with his head upon the table, we did not see how we were to induce him to leave us. “You’d better take the sovereign,--just for the present,” we said.