He took her hand and kissed it. Jane Tuke had never had her hand kissed before, and would have drawn it away. The lady within was ashamed of her rough gloves, not knowing they had won her her ladyhood. In the real world, there are no ladies but true women. Also they only are beautiful. All there show what they are, and the others are all more or less deformed. Oh, what lovely ladies will walk into the next world out of the rough cocoon of their hard-wrought bodies--not because they have been working women, but because they have been true women. Among working women as among countesses, there are last that shall be first, and first that shall be last. _What kind of woman_ will be the question. Alas for those, whether high or low or in the middle, whose business in life has been to be ladies! What poor, mean, draggled, unangelic things will come crawling out of the husk they are leaving behind them, which yet, perhaps, will show a glimmer, in the whiteness of death, of what they were meant to be, if only they had lived, had _been_, had put forth the power that was in them as their birthright! Not a few I know will crawl out such, except they awake from the dead, and cry for life. Perhaps one and another in the next world will say to me, “You meant me! I know now why you were always saying such things!” For I suspect the next world will more plainly be a going on with this than most people think--only it will be much better for some, and much worse for others, as the Lord has taught us in the parable of the rich man and the beggar. “No, Richard,” resumed his aunt, “your father was not a good man, but he may be better now, and perhaps you will help him to be better still.” “It's doubtful if ever I have the chance,” returned Richard. “We've had a pretty fair quarrel already!” “He can't take your birthright from you!” she cried. “That may be--but what _is_ my birthright? He told me the land was not entailed; he can leave it to anybody he likes. But I'm not going to do what he would have me do--that is if it be wrong,” added Richard, not willing to start the question about the Mansons. “To be a sneak would be a fine beginning! If that's to be a gentleman, I will be no gentleman!” “Right you are, my son!” said Tuke, who that moment came in. “Oh uncle!” cried Richard, starting to his feet. “_Uncle_!--Ho! ho! What's up now?” “Nothing's up, but all's out, father!” answered Richard, putting his hand in that of the bookbinder. “You knew, and now I know! How shall I ever thank you for what you have done for me, and been to me, and given me!” “Precious little anyway, my boy! I wish it had been a great deal more.” “Shall I tell you what you have done for me I--You made a man of me first of all, by giving me a trade, and making me independent. Then again, by that trade you taught me to love the very shape of a book. Baronet or no baronet,--” “What do you mean?” “My father threatens to disown me.”