"Go about your business!" cried Mrs. Caspar. "There's a pair of you!" Her anger exhausted and shame possessing her, she was going out into the yard to shelter herself in the little shed against the Workhouse wall, when Alf's sudden scream stayed her. "Mum!--down't leave me!--he'll kill me!" She turned to mark a white flare burning in the face of her elder son. She had seen it before and had been afraid. When Ern looked like that he ceased to be Ern: he became transfigured--yes, and terrible: like, she sometimes thought, the cavalier in the picture must have been in anger. "Take them sopping duds off," she said quietly, "and then go up and put your Sundays on." Half an hour later Ern, wearing dry clothes, entered the study. He was sweet, smiling, and a thought abashed. His father, on the other hand, evinced signs of terrible emotion. His face was mottled, and he was shaking. Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he stood before the fire, trying pitifully to preserve his dignity, and moving uneasily from leg to leg like a chained elephant. "Did she hurt you?" he asked, seeking to steady his voice. Ern shook his head. "She laid about me middlin tidy," he admitted. "But she didn't not to say hurt me. She don't know how--a woman don't. Too much flusteration along of it." Edward Caspar collapsed into a chair. "What happened?" he asked. Ern recounted the story truthfully, the white glimmer in his face coming and going between pants as he told. "Why d'you let him lead you astray?" asked the father irritably, at the end. Ern wagged his head slowly and began to scrape once more with his foot. "Alf's artfuller nor me!" he said at last in a shamefaced way. CHAPTER XIII ALF MAKES A REMARK Both boys turned up at Sunday-school next morning: Alf defiant, Ern abashed. Mr. Pigott ignored the former, snubbed him brutally when occasion offered, and showed himself benignant to the prime sinner. After chapel Mrs. Caspar spoke to him. "I don't know what you think of my son, Mr. Pigott," she began. "Which son?" asked the other in his bluff way. "Why, Ernie to be sure. He's always bringing shame upon me." "He's worth twice the other," cried Mr. Pigott, letting off steam. "Ah, yes, you've got your favourites, Mr. Pigott!" retorted the woman. "And I'm not the only one!" answered the outraged schoolmaster. "Ern's a boy. And boys will be boys, as we all know. But he's a little gentleman, Ern is. He's his father over again." The comparison of Ernie to his father, however well intentioned, always touched Mrs. Caspar on the raw. Her eyes sparkled. Every now and then she reminded you forcibly that her grandmother had lived in a by-street--off Greyhound Road, Fulham. "Ah," she muttered vengefully, "I'll cut his little liver out yet, you'll see." Mr. Pigott rounded on her, genuinely shocked. "And you a religious woman!" he cried. "Shame on you!"