“Oh, if he flourishes as the business flourishes you can just enjoy your peace of mind,” said the fiddler, still with his manner of making a small dry joke of everything. “That’s all very well, but it doesn’t close my eyes to that poor woman lying there and moaning just for the touch of his little ’and before she passes away. Mrs. Bowerbank says she believes I’ll bring him.” “Who believes? Mrs. Bowerbank?” “I wonder if there’s anything in life holy enough for you to take it seriously,” Miss Pynsent rejoined, snapping off a thread with temper. “The day you stop laughing I should like to be there.” “So long as you’re there I shall never stop. What is it you want me to advise you? to take the child, or to leave the mother to wail herself away?” “I want you to tell me if he’ll curse me when he grows older.” “That depends on what you do. However, he’ll probably curse you in either case.” “You don’t believe that, because you like him, you love him,” said Amanda with acuteness. “Precisely; and he’ll curse me too. He’ll curse every one. Much good will our love do us! He won’t be happy.” “I don’t know how you think I bring him up,” the little dressmaker remarked with dignity. “You don’t bring him up at all. He brings you up.” “That’s what you’ve always said; but you don’t know. If you mean that he does as he likes, then he ought to be happy. It ain’t kind of you to say he won’t be,” Miss Pynsent added reproachfully. “I’d say anything you like if what I say would help the matter. He’s a thin-skinned, morbid, mooning, introspective little beggar, with a good deal of imagination and not much perseverance, who’ll expect a good deal more of life than he’ll find in it. That’s why he won’t be happy.” Miss Pynsent listened to this description of her _protégé_ with an appearance of criticising it mentally; but in reality she didn’t know what “introspective” meant and didn’t like to ask. “He’s the cleverest person I know except yourself,” she said in a moment; for Mr. Vetch’s words had been in the key of what she thought most remarkable in him. What that was she would have been unable to say. “Thank you very much for putting me first,” the fiddler returned after a series of puffs. “The youngster’s interesting; one sees he has a mind and even a soul, and in that respect he’s—I won’t say unique, but peculiar. I shall watch with curiosity to see what he grows into. But I shall always be glad that I’m a selfish brute of a decent bachelor—that I never invested in that class of goods.” “Well, you _are_ comforting. You’d spoil him more than I do,” said Amanda. “Possibly, but it would be in a different way. I wouldn’t tell him every three minutes that his father was a duke.”