"I'm jealous of your good name, Tom, jealous of evil influence." "Evil influence? What evil influence?" "Going to the Thorn and Thistle has done you a great deal of harm; it has caused you to give up your Young Men's Class, and--and--but there, I needn't talk any more about it. You understand what I mean. It must be either one or the other, Tom." "You mean that I must either give up you or Polly Powell?" "It means more than that," replied the girl, "it means that you must either give up me or give up going to the Thorn and Thistle. You used to be a teetotaler, Tom." "As though any lad's a teetotaler in these days," laughed the young fellow. "Come now, Alice, you are not so narrow-minded as that. I am nearly twenty-three now, and if I want a glass of beer surely I can have it. You don't mean to say that everybody but teetotalers are going to the bad." "You know very well what I mean, Tom. You are not the kind of young man you were, and either you give up these things or we part company." "Nay, Alice, doan't be narrow-minded. I suppose," he added bitterly, "that you are beginning to look higher than me, that you are thinking o' one of the manufacturers. I hear that Harry Briarfield was up at your house to supper the other night." They had by this time left the Liverpool Road and had entered Scott's Park, which during the last few years had become a rendezvous for the people of the town, especially on Sunday afternoons. "You know," went on the girl, "that it made no difference to me when people told me that I was choosing a weaver. I didn't think about it, I only thought of you. But, Tom, I shall never marry any one who--who can find his pleasure in such places as the Thorn and Thistle, and who sneers at Sunday School." "You mean," said Tom, rather angrily, "that if you continue to keep company with me I must feed on your religious lolly-pops." An angry flush mounted the girl's cheek, but she continued to speak quietly. "Tom," she said, "will you answer me truly? Do you find anything at the Thorn and Thistle better than you found in the young men's class? You sneer at religion, but religion does no one any harm; rather it always does good; anyhow, it's everything to me, and you have to make your choice." Tom looked at her steadily. He knew what she meant, knew too that the time had come when he would have to make his choice. At that moment he saw what Polly Powell meant to his life, saw, too, that if he followed the road in which he had been walking during the last few months he would have to give up Alice Lister. He saw more than this, for at that moment Polly Powell's blandishments had no effect on him. She appeared to him in her true light--a coarse, vulgar girl. "You don't care about me like you did," he said angrily. "You are getting tired of me."