Rumours, well-supported rumours, as to the kind of life which Mr. Neefit was leading reached Alexandra Cottage, filling Mrs. Neefit\'s mind with dismay, and making Polly very angry indeed. He came home always somewhat the worse for drink, and would talk of punching the heads both of Mr. Newton and of Mr. Ontario Moggs. Waddle, who was very true to his master\'s interests, had taken an opportunity of seeing Mrs. Neefit, and of expressing a very distinct idea that the business was going to the mischief. Mrs. Neefit was of opinion that in this emergency the business should be sold, and that they might safely remove themselves to some distant country,—to Tunbridge, or perhaps to Ware. Polly, however, would not accede to her mother\'s views. The evil must, she thought, be cured at once. "If father goes on like this, I shall just walk straight out of the house, and marry Moggs at once," Polly said. "Father makes no account of my name, and so I must just look out for myself." She had not as yet communicated these intentions to Ontario, but she was quite sure that she would be supported in her views by him whenever she should choose to do so.

Once or twice Ontario came down to the cottage, and when he did so, Mr. Neefit was always told of the visit. "I ain\'t going to keep anything from father, mother," Polly would say. "If he chooses to misbehave, that isn\'t my fault. I mean to have Mr. Moggs, and it\'s only natural I should like to see him." Neefit, when informed of these visits, after swearing that Moggs junior was a sneaking scoundrel to come to his house in his absence, would call upon Moggs senior, and swear with many threats that his daughter should have nothing but what she stood up in. Moggs senior would stand quite silent, cutting the skin on his hand with his shoemaker\'s knife, and would simply bid the infuriated breeches-maker good morning, when he left the shop. But, in truth, Mr. Moggs senior had begun to doubt. "I\'d leave it awhile, Onty, if I was you," he said. "May be, after all, he\'ll give her nothing."

"I\'ll take her the first day she\'ll come to me,—money or no money," said Moggs junior.

Foiled ambition had, in truth, driven the breeches-maker to madness. But there were moments in which he was softened, melancholy, and almost penitent. "Why didn\'t you have him when he come down to Margate," he said, with the tears running down his cheek, that very evening after eating his rump-steak in Mr. Newton\'s rooms. The soda-water and brandy, with a little gin-and-water after it, had reduced him to an almost maudlin condition, so that he was unable to support his parental authority.

"Because I didn\'t choose, father. It wasn\'t his fault. He spoke fair enough,—though I don\'t suppose he ever wanted it. Why should he?"

"You might have had him then. He\'d \'ve never dared to go back. I\'d a killed him if he had."

"What good would it have done, father? He\'d never have loved me, and he\'d have despised you and mother."

"I wouldn\'t \'ve minded that," said Mr. Neefit, wiping his eyes.

"But I should have minded. What should I have felt with a husband as wouldn\'t have wanted me ever to have my own father in his house? Would that have made me happy?"

"It \'d \'ve made me happy to know as you was there."

"No, father; there would have been no happiness in it. When I came to see what he was I knew I should never love him. He was just willing to take me because of his word;—and was I going to a man like that? No, father;—certainly not." The poor man was at that moment too far gone in his misery to argue the matter further, and he lay on the old sofa, very much at Polly\'s mercy. "drop it, father," she said. "It wasn\'t to be, and it couldn\'t have been. You\'d better say you\'ll drop it." But, sick and uncomfortable as he was on that evening, he couldn\'t be got to say that he would drop it.

Nor could he be got to drop it for some ten days after that;—but on a certain evening he had come home very uncomfortable from the effects of gin-and-water, and had been spoken to very sensibly both by his wife and daughter.

By seven on the following morning Ontario Moggs was sitting in the front parlour of the house at Hendon, and Polly Neefit was sitting with him. He had never been there at so early an hour before, and it was thought afterwards by both Mr. and Mrs. Neefit that his appearance, so unexpected by them, had not surprised their daughter Polly. Could it have been possible that she had sent a message to him after that little scene with her father? There he was, at any rate, and Polly was up to receive him. "Now, Onty, that\'ll do. I didn\'t want to talk nonsense, but just to settle something."

"But you\'ll tell a fellow that you\'re glad to see him?"

"No, I won\'t. I won\'t tell a fellow anything he doesn\'t know already. You and I have got to get married."

"Of course we have."

"But we want father\'s consent. I\'m not going to have him made unhappy, if I can help it. He\'s that wretched sometimes at present that my heart is half killed about him."

"The things he says are monstrous," asserted Moggs, thinking of the protestation lately made by the breeches-maker in his own hearing, to the effect that Ralph Newton should yet be made to marry his daughter.

"All the same I\'ve got to think about him. There\'s a dozen or so of men as would marry me, Mr. Moggs; but I can never have another father."

"I\'ll be the first of the dozen any way," said the gallant Ontario.

"That depends. However, mother says so, and if father \'ll consent, I won\'t go against it. I\'ll go to him now, before he\'s up, and I\'ll tell him you\'re here. I\'ll bring him to his senses if I can. I don\'t know whatever made him think so much about gentlemen."

"He didn\'t learn it from you, Polly."

"Perhaps he did, after all; and if so, that\'s the more reason why I\'d forgive him." So saying, Polly went up-stairs upon her mission. On the landing she met her mother, and made known the fact that Ontario was in the parlour. "Don\'t you go to him, mother;—not yet," said Polly. Whereby it may be presumed that Mrs. Neefit had been informed of Mr. Moggs\'s visit before Polly had gone to him.

Mr. Neefit was in bed, and his condition apparently was not a happy one. He was lying with his head between his hands, and was groaning, not loudly, but very bitterly. His mode of life for the last month had not been of a kind to make him comfortable, and his conscience, too, was ill at ease. He had been a hard-working man, who had loved respectability and been careful of his wife and child. He had been proud to think that nobody could say anything against him, and that he had always paid his way. Up to the time of this disastrous fit of ambition on Polly\'s behalf he had never made himself ridiculous, and had been a prosperous tradesman, well thought of by his customers. Suddenly he had become mad, but not so mad as to be unconscious of his own madness. The failure of his hopes, joined to the inexpressibly bitter feeling that in their joint transactions young Newton had received all that had been necessary to him, whereas he, Neefit, had got none of that for which he had bargained,—these together had so upset him that he had lost his balance, had travelled out of his usual grooves, and had made an ass of himself. He knew he had made an ass of himself,—and was hopelessly endeavouring to show himself to be less of an ass than people thought him, by some success in his violence. If he could only punish young Newton terribly, people would understand why he had done all this. But drink had been necessary to give him courage for his violence, and now as he lay miserable in bed, his courage was very low.

"Father," said Polly, "shall I give you a drink?" Neefit muttered something, and took the cold tea that was offered to him. It was cold tea, with just a spoonful of brandy in it to make it acceptable. "Father, there ought to be an end of all this;—oughtn\'t there?"

"I don\'t know about no ends. I\'ll be down on him yet."

"No you............