"O' course I do," said Joe Banks, sturdily. "I'm not going to fight again my own flesh and blood on a question o' position. Look here," he continued, now speaking angrily, "I never was jealous of my old master's rise in life, and I stuck to him and helped him, and he made me promise to stick by and help his son; and that I'm going to do, for I don't believe if he'd been alive he'd ha' been owt but pleased to see his boy make up to my gal. It ain't my seeking: it's Master Dick's. He loves she, and she loves he, and before I'll step 'twixt 'em, and say as one workman's son's too big for the other workman's daughter, I'll be--. No, I won't, not before you, Missus; and now good night, and I wish the strike well ended." Joe Banks swung out of the room with all the sturdy independence of a man with a thousand pounds of his own, and then made his way home, while Mrs Glaire sat as it were stunned. "What can I do? What can I do?" she muttered; and then sat thinking till Eve, looking very pale and ill, walked softly into the room, and knelt by her side, turning up her sad face and red eyes to those of the troubled mother. "Aunt, dear," she whispered, "Dick has just come in, and gone up to his room. Shall we ask him to come down to us?" "What for?" said Mrs Glaire sharply. "Don't you think, Aunt, we ought to try and forgive him, and win him back?" Mrs Glaire rose slowly, and went to a side table, from which she took a Prayer-book, and read from it the sentence beginning, "I will arise," to the end; and then, laying down the book, she took Eve's head between her hands, and kissed her white forehead gently. "Eve, my child, yes, we ought to try and forgive him; I, for his cruel deceit of the woman who gave him birth; you, for his outrage against the woman who was to be his wife. I will forgive him, but he must come--he must arise and come, and seek for pardon first. While you--" "Oh, Aunt, Aunt," moaned Eve, hiding her face in the elder's breast, "I never knew before how much I loved him." "And you forgive him, child?" "Yes, Aunt, I forgive," said Eve, raising her head, and looking sadly in the elder woman's face, "I forgive him, but--" "But what, my child?" "All that is past now--for ever." Mrs Glaire did not speak for a few moments, but stood holding her niece's hand, looking straight away from her into vacancy, while from above there floated slowly down and entered the room the penetrating fumes of the cigar Dick was smoking in his bedroom, as with his heels upon the table, and a glass of spirits and water by his side, he amused himself by reading a French novel, growling every now and then as he came across some idiom or local phrase which he could not make out, and apparently quite oblivious of the fact that three women were making themselves wretched on his behalf. Suddenly a low whistle was heard, and Mrs Glaire started. "What was that?" she exclaimed.