"But he says, quite soft and tender-like," (here Paul shivered with shame), "'No, you needn't do that, cook, there ain't any occasion for it; only,' he says, 'if you haven't got no pass, you'll have to give me a kiss, you know, cook!' I thought I should have sunk through the stairs, I was that overcome. I saw through his rouge with half an eye." "Why, he said the same to me," said Eliza, "only I had a pass, as luck had it, which Miss Barbara give me. I'd ha' boxed his ears if he'd tried it, too, master or no master!" "You talk light, Eliza," said the cook sentimentally, "but you weren't there to see. It wasn't only the words, it was the way he said it, and the 'ug he gave me at the time. It was as good as a proposial. And, I tell you, whatever you may say--and mark my words--I 'ave 'opes!" "Then, if I was you, cook," said Eliza, "I'd try if I could get him to speak out plain in writing; then, whatever came of it, there'd be as good as five hundred pounds in your pockets." "Love-letters!" cried the cook, "why, Lord love you, Eliza---- Why, William, how you made me jump! I thought you was up seein' to the supper-table." "The pastrycook's man is looking after all that, Jane," said Boaler's voice. "I've been up outside the droring-room all this time, lookin' at the games goin' on in there. It's as good as a play to see the way as master is a unbendin' of himself, and such a out and out stiff-un as he used to be, too! But it ain't what I like to see in a respectable house. I'm glad I give warning. It doesn't do for a man in my position to compromise his character by such goings on. I never see anything like it in any families I lived with before. Just come up and see for yourself. You needn't mind about cleanin' of yourself--they won't see you." So the cook allowed herself to be persuaded by Boaler, and the two went up to the hall, and, to Mr. Bultitude's intense relief, forgot to close the glazed door which cut him off from the staircase. As he followed them upstairs at a cautious interval, and thought over what he had just so unwillingly overheard, he felt as one who had just been subjected to a moral showerbath. "That dreadful woman!" he groaned. "Who would have dreamed that she would get such horrible ideas into her head? I shall never be able to look either of those women in the face again: they will both have to go--and she made such excellent soup, too. I do hope that miserable Dick has not been fool enough to write to her--but no, that's too absurd." But more than ever he began to wish that he had stayed in the playground. When he reached the hall he stood there for some moments in anxious deliberation over his best course of proceeding. His main idea was to lie in wait somewhere for Dick, and try the result of an appeal to his better feelings to acknowledge his outcast parent and abdicate gracefully.