Why not? Perhaps old Oliver Constable’s exercise of his professional skill in the middle of his season of recreation, was a greater sacrifice to friendship, and not more of an act of vanity, than is the preparation of a salad or a sauce by the amateur hands of a modern host or hostess. As Oliver shook off the flour, and put on his coat again, Webster lounged into the bakehouse, and stopped short, bewildered, staring hard at the empty board and the baker who had just quitted it. ‘Webster, it is not in the fitting order of things that I should be under the necessity of doing your work,’ said Oliver, whose temper had got time to cool; ‘I have warned you before, and you have paid no heed. The connection between us had better come to an end. I give you your leave.’ ‘As you please, sir; from this moment if you like,’ said Webster jauntily. ‘Very well. I take you at your word,’ said his master. Oliver was inclined to make an example—if it can be called an example among servants, whose turn has come to carry matters with a high hand, and dictate terms to their masters. Let us hope that the new masters will be magnanimous, and not abuse their power, to a still greater extent than was done by the old, else the present dead-lock would never have arisen. But Oliver was not aware—whether or not the knowledge might have swayed him—of the combination of circumstances which rendered Webster’s dismissal a severe blow to the man, in spite of his bravado, at a crisis in his affairs. The restless, factious baker had been keeping company with a girl slightly above him in station, whose relations, especially her father—a thriving master-builder, of punctilious and conservative views—did not by any means admire in his prospective son-in-law the hectoring tone, and the free and easy ways, which, along with considerable force of will and cleverness at his trade, as at other things, had secured for Webster an ascendency among the other journeymen bakers, who were characterised for the most part by greater pliability and less ability. The principal score in Webster’s favour was his remaining in Mr. Constable’s service. It was this which kept Webster from being rejected with unhesitating severity by Keys the builder, and as an inevitable consequence of the summary dismissal, with tender regret, by pretty, gentle, Nelly Keys. For though Nelly had been greatly taken with her lover’s lordly swagger, she was too good a girl, and too dutiful a daughter, to act in direct disobedience to her father. When Webster got his leave from Oliver, he knew it was all up with him and Nelly, to whom he was attached with the peculiar vehemence and self-assertion of his nature, though he put the best face on what he regarded as a misfortune, if not a wrong, and braved it out at the first brush in the bakehouse.