But there came an evening when his eyes were opened—in some degree, at least. Perhaps something especially perverse had happened in a Spring Handicap (Spring Handicaps were just beginning), perhaps it was some other of the vexations that beset a gentlemanly career: but certainly Mr. Henry Butson came into Harbour Lane in no amiable mood. At the corner, where a public-house shed light across the street, he ran into a stout bare-armed girl in a faded ultramarine hat, and made to push her roughly aside. But the girl stood her ground, and planted an untender elbow near the spot where his watch-chain hung resplendent. “Garn!” she cried, “bought the street, ’ave yer?” And then as he sought to pass on: “D’y’ear! Ye got yer collar an’ yer chain; where’s yer muzzle?” Nowise mollified by this outrage, Mr. Butson came scowling in at the shop door, and taking no notice of Nan, who stood at the counter, entered the back parlour and slammed the door behind him. It was barely nine o’clock, and so early a return was uncommon. Bessy sat by the fireside, sewing. Mr. Butson was angry with the world, sorely needing someone to bully, and Bessy was providentially convenient. He put a cigar into his mouth and strode across to the shelf in the corner, shoving the girl and her chair and her crutch out of his way in a heap. The shelf carried Bessy’s tattered delight of old books; and, dragging a random handful of leaves from among them, while a confused bunch fell on the floor, he twisted up one leaf and thrust it into the gas flame. Bessy seized his arm. “O don’t!” she pleaded. “Please don’t! Not out of the book! There’s a lot I made on the mantelpiece! Don’t, O don’t!” Indeed a glass vase stood full of pipe-lights. But he jerked his elbow into her face, knocking her backward, and swore savagely. He lit his pipe with the precious leaf, and then, because Bessy wept, he took another handful from the shelf and pitched it on the fire. At this, pleading the harder, she limped forward to snatch them off, but Mr. Butson, with a timely fling of the foot, checked her sound leg, and brought her headlong on the fender. “Yus,” he roared, furious at the contumacy, “you take ’em auf, when I put ’em on! Go on, an’ see what I’ll do to ye? Damn lazy skewshanked ’eifer!” He took her by the shoulder as she made to rise, and pushed her forward. “Go an’ earn yer livin’, y’idle slut!” Nan, in the shop, heard from the beginning, and trembled. Her impulse to interfere she checked as she might, for she well knew _that_ would worsen Bessy’s plight; but it was choking hard. In the midst Johnny burst in from the street, whistling. “Why, mother,” he said, “what’s up? Ill? You look—what’s that?” “No—nothing, Johnny. Don’t go in. I’ll go. Stay—” But there was a cry and a noise of falling. Johnny flung open the parlour door and stood aghast. . . . Butson pushed the girl forward. “Go an’ earn yer livin’, y’ idle slut! Get out o’ this!”