He meekly obeyed. Aline began her galantine with a sigh of relief, and condescended to laugh at Jimmie's account of his exploits. But when the meal was ended, she insisted on redeeming the precious watch, and much happier in knowing it safe in his pocket, she carried him off to a ready-made tailor's, where she ordered him a beautiful thin overcoat for thirty shillings, a neat blue serge suit for three pounds ten, handing over in payment the five-pound note she had abstracted from his gleanings, and a new hat, for which she paid from a mysterious private store of her own. These matters having been arranged to her satisfaction, she made up for her hectoring ways by nestling against him on top of the homeward-bound omnibus and telling him what a delightful, lovely morning they had spent. Thus it will be seen that Jimmie, aided by Aline's stout little heart, was battling more than usual against adversity. Aline had many schemes. Why should she not obtain some lucrative employment? Jimmie made a wry face at the phrase and protested vehemently against the suggestion. A hulking varlet like him to let her wear her fingers to the bone by addressing envelopes at twopence a million? He would sooner return to the five-shillings-a-dozen oil paintings; he would go round the streets at dawn and play “ghost” to pavement artists; he would take in washing! The idea of the street-pictures caught his fancy. He expatiated upon its advantages. Five pitches, say at two shillings a pitch, that would be ten shillings a day--three pounds a week. A most business-like plan, to say nothing of the education in art it would be to the public! He had his own fantastical way of dealing with the petty cares of life. As for Aline working, he would not hear of it. Though they lived now from hand to mouth, they were always fed. He had faith in the ravens. But all the fantasy and the faith could not subdue Aline's passionate rebellion against Jimmie's ostracism. She was very young, very feminine; she had not his wide outlook, his generous sympathies, his disdain of trivial, ignoble things, his independence of soul. The world was arrayed against Jimmie. Society was persecuting him with monstrous injustice. She hated his oppressors, longed fiercely for an opportunity of vindicating his honour. It was sometimes more than she could bear--to think of his straitened means, the absence of sitters, the lowered prices he obtained, the hours of unremitting toil he spent at his easel and drawing-table. During their travels she had not realised what the scandal would mean to him professionally. Now her heart rose in hot revolt and thirsted for battle in Jimmie's cause.