"Depend upon it, Sidney, you'll never set eyes on that brooch again." "I'm not so sure about that," was the half-confident reply. "And depend upon it, you don't deserve to see it, boy--and that I for one shall be glad if it never turns up." "Pa!--you really can't mean it." "You told a lie about it, Sidney, and though you saved the girl from prison, yet it was a big, black lie all the same; and if luck follows it, why it's clean against the Bible." "The girl looked so pitifully at me, you see--and I did think she might give the brooch back, out of gratitude." "Gratitude in a young thief out of Kent Street?" laughed the father; "well, it's a lesson in life to you, boy, and, after all, it only cost twelve and sixpence." "Ah!" sighed Sidney, "it was a long pull." "You'll have learned by this that a lie never prospers--that in the long run it confronts you again when least expected, to make your cheek burn with your own baseness. I wonder now," gravely surveying his son, "whether you would have let that girl off, if there had been no hope of the brooch coming to light." The boy hesitated--then looked full at his sire. "Well--I think I should." "I think you told a lie for twelve and sixpence--the devil got a bargain from a Hinchford." "You're rather hard upon me, pa," complained the boy, "and it wasn't for twelve and sixpence, because I never got the brooch back; and if I ever tell another lie, may I never see twelve and sixpence of my own again. There!" "Bravo, Sid!--that's a promise I'm glad to have wormed out of you, somehow. And yet--ye gods!--what a promise!" "I'll keep it--see if I don't," said Master Sidney, with his lips compressed, and his cheeks a little flushed. The father shook his head slowly. "You are going into business--you will be a business man,--presently a City man--one who will drive hard bargains, make hard bargains, and have to fight his way through a hundred thousand liars. In the pursuit of money--above all, in the scraping together of that fugitive article, you must lie, or let a good chance go by to turn an honest penny. I can't expect you _much_ better than other men, Sid." "I wonder whether uncle lied much before----" "He lied as little as he could, I daresay," quickly interrupted the father, "but he became a rich man, and he rose from City trading. But I told you once before--I think I have told you more than once--that I never wish to hear that uncle's name." "Yes, but I had forgotten it for the moment--speaking of money-making, and City men, threw me a little off my guard." "Yes, yes, I saw that, my boy--drop the curtain over the old grievance, and shut the past away from you and me. I don't complain--I'm happy enough--a little contents me. In the future, with a son to love and be proud of, I see the old man's happiest days!" "We'll try our best, sir, to make them so," exclaimed the boy.