Ontario thought about it for a moment, before he replied. "No;--I will not," said he. "To say that of any young woman wouldn't be in accord with my ideas." "Because you can't. It's all gammon. She don't mean to have him, Mr. Newton. You may take my word for that. You go in and ask her if she do. A pretty thing indeed! I can't invite my friend, Mr. Newton, to eat a bit of dinner, and let him walk out with my Polly, but you must interfere. If you had her to-morrow you wouldn't have a shilling with her." "I don't want a shilling with her!" said Ontario, still standing upon his legs. "I love her. Will Mr. Newton say as fair as that?" Mr. Newton found it very difficult to say anything. Even had he been thoroughly intent on the design of making Polly his wife, he could not have brought himself to declare his love aloud, as had just been done by Mr. Moggs. "This is a sort of matter that shouldn't be discussed in public," he said at last. "Public or private, I love her!" said Ontario Moggs with his hand on his heart. Polly herself was certainly badly treated among them. She got no walk that evening, and received no assurance of undying affection either from one suitor or the other. It became manifest even to Neefit himself that the game could not be played out on this evening. He could not turn Moggs off the premises, because his wife would have interfered. Nor, had he done so, would it have been possible, after such an affair to induce Polly to stir from the house. She certainly had been badly used among them; and so she took occasion to tell her father when the visitors were both gone. They left the house together at about eight, and Polly at that time had not reappeared. Moggs went to the nearest station of the Midland Railway, and Ralph walked to the Swiss Cottage. Certainly Mr. Neefit's little dinner had been unsuccessful; but Ralph Newton, as he went back to London, was almost disposed to think that Providence had interposed to save him. "I'll tell you what it is, father," said Polly to her papa, as soon as the two visitors had left the house, "if that's the way you are going to go on, I'll never marry anybody as long as I live." "My dear, it was all your mother," said Mr. Neefit. "Now wasn't it all your mother? I wish she'd been blowed fust!" CHAPTER X. SIR THOMAS IN HIS CHAMBERS.