"Don't--pray don't," sobbed Jessie, joining her hands and looking piteously up in the smooth, smug face. "Don't do that, and I'll promise never to see--never to see Tom. No, no: I can't--I can't--I can't!" she cried, bursting into an agony of weeping. "You shall promise no such thing, Jessie--dear cousin," cried Tom, in a manly way, as, extricating himself, he stepped up to her side and tried to take her hand; but she shrank from him and clung to her mother. "Jessie," he exclaimed, "as I'm a man, I'll be true to you in spite of everything." "This is your work," cried Max furiously, as he turned to his brother. "Do you see now what you have done?" "That was well spoke, Tom, and I never thought better of you than I do now," said Dick, rousing himself, though his face looked more perplexed than ever. "But I've had enough of this here. You and your father belong to the swells, and I'm a poor working man. You two are ile, and floats on the top--we're only water, and goes to the bottom. But p'r'aps the water's got as much pride in it as the ile; and so's my poor girl, when she's got her bit of sorrow over. You're no match for her." Max gave a loud, contemptuous laugh, which made Mrs Shingle look up as if she would wither him. "Not," continued Dick, "but what she's the best girl in the whole world, though I as her father says it." Dick took up his hammer in a helpless, meaningless way, and turned it over and over, examining the handle and the head, and gazed from one to the other, as if asking their opinion about the quality of the tool. "I don't think I was ever so hard up in my life," continued Dick--"and mother here will bear me out if I don't speak what's good as Gorspel; but afore I'd stay under your roof I'd try the workus. You needn't be afraid, Mr Maximilian Shingle, as your poor shoemaker of a brother, as has been unlucky all his life, a and never see the way to get up the ladder without shouldering and pulling some one else down--which wasn't his way--will ever trouble you again, nor let your wife's boys come hanging about after his poor dear gal. I never encouraged it, and never shall. Some day, p'r'aps, you'll come yourself and ask for it to be." "I ask!" cried Max--"a common sempstress, an impudent drab!" "Mr Shingle!" cried Tom furiously. "Silence, sir!" shouted Max, who, roused by the opposition he had received, struck at his step-son with his tasselled cane. "I said an impudent, bold-faced drab!"