'Well, supper's waiting. And here's Miss Trent here, too. Not that that'll make you come any quicker; perhaps I'd better not have mentioned it.'

Jane pressed her lips together after speaking, and withdrew.

'Don't you like Miss Trent, Mr. Ackroyd?' Jack inquired, when they were left alone. He was, as I have said, a sharp-eyed boy, and Luke could have given wonderful reports of his keenness of brain. It is often thus. The father has faculties which never ripen in himself, and which, as likely as not, cause him a life's struggle and unrest; they come to maturity and efficiency in the son. What more pathetic, rightly considered, than the story of those fathers whose lives are but a preparation for the richer lives of their sons? Poor Bunce, fighting with his ignorance and his passions, unable to overcome either, obstinate in holding on to a half-truth, catching momentary glimpses of a far-away ideal--what did it all mean, but that his boy should stand where _he_ had been thrown, should see light where _his_ eyes had striven vainly against the fog! Perhaps there is compensation to the parent if he live to see the lad conquering; but what of those who fall into silence when all is still uncertain, when they recognise in their offspring an hereditary weakness and danger as often as a rare gleam of new promise? One would bow reverently and sadly by the graves of such men.

It was a happy thought of Ackroyd's to give the boy lessons in chemistry. To teach is often the surest way of learning. In explaining simple things, Luke often enough discovered for the first time his own ignorance. In very fact, the greater part of the past two years had been spent by him in making discoveries of that nature--long before he thought of new combinations of oleaginous matter. By degrees he had come to suspect that, as regarded the employment of his leisure hours, he was very decidedly on the wrong track. Curiously, for Ackroyd as well as for Bunce, there had arisen a measure of evil from Walter Egremont's aspiring work. Luke, though not to such a violent degree as Bunce, was led to offer opposition to everything savouring of idealism--that is to say, of idealism as Egremont had presented it. He had heard but one of Walter's lectures, yet that was enough to realise for him the kind of thing which henceforth he disliked and distrusted.

Egremont, it seemed to him, had sought to make working men priggish and effeminate, whereas what they wanted was back-bone and consciousness of the bard facts of life. Ackroyd had never cared much for literature proper; his intellectual progress was henceforth to be in the direction of hostility to literature. When his various love difficulties ceased to absorb all his attention, he went back to his scientific books, and found that his appetite for such studies was keener than ever. At length he converted his bedroom into a laboratory, resolved to pursue certain investigations seriously. When his heart--or diaphragm, or whatever else it may be--left him at peace, his brain could work to sufficient purpose. And of late he had worked most vigorously. He ceased to trouble himself about politics, and religion, and social matters. His views thereon, he declared, had undergone no change whatever, but he had no time to talk at present.

But a question of Jack's waited for an answer.

'That's only my sister's fun,' Luke replied, with a smile. 'There's no reason why I shouldn't like her.'

'I think she don't look bad,' Jack remarked, as if allowing himself to stray from chemistry to a matter of trivial interest. He added: 'But she don't come up to Miss Nancarrow. I like _her_; she's the right kind of girl, don't you think so?'

'First-rate.'

'I say, Mr. Ackroyd, why don't you never come now and call for her, like you used to?'

'Used to? When?'

'Why, you know well enough. Not long ago,'

'Oh, years ago!'

'No, not more than a year ago.'

'Yes, Jack; a year and a half.'

'Well it didn't seem so long. I say, why don't you? I've only just thought of it.'

'There's no need to call. I see her sometimes, and that's enough for friends, isn't it?'

'I believe you was going to marry Miss Nancarrow, wasn't you?'

'Hollo! Who told you such a thing as that?'

'Nobody. I thought of it myself. It looks like it, when I think. I'm older now, you see, than I was then; I see more into things.'

Ackroyd laughed heartily.

'It seems you do.'

'Well but, tell me, Mr. Ackroyd.'

'No, I shan't. When you get a bit older still, you'll know that men have no business to talk about such things. Understand that, Jack.

Never get into the way of talking about things that aren't your business; there's been a deal of harm done by that.'

'Has there?'

Luke was silent. The boy continued:

'You're sure you _are_ friends with Miss Nancarrow?'

'Of course I am, capital friends. Why, we were both of us on the Greenwich boat last Sunday, and we laughed and talked no end of time.'

But Luke was ready to leave the room. He appointed another evening when Jack should come, and the lad scampered off.

Leaving Ackroyd to go down and have supper with his sister and Lydia, and with Mr. Poole, who had just come home from a late job, let us go after Jack into Newport Street. As he reached the house, his father was just coming out.

'You're too late,' said the latter, with a shake of the head. 'Tell Mr.

Ackroyd you must be back by nine. What about your lessons, eh?'

'Lessons!' exclaimed Jack, scornfully. 'Do them in half a crack before breakfast. Why, there's nothing but a bit of jography, and some kings, and three proportion sums, and a page of----'

'All right. Go to bed quietly. Nelly's asleep long ago. I shall be back in half an hour.'

Jack went very softly upstairs. In the one room which was still the entire home of his father and himself and his little sister, he found a lamp burning low. The child was in her small cot, sleeping peacefully.

Jack began to unbutton his acid-stained waistcoat, having seized a piece of bread and butter that lay waiting for him, when his thoughts intervened to suspend the operation of undressing. He left the room again, and looked at the door on the opposite side of the landing. He saw a light beneath it. He advanced and rapped softly.

'Who's that?' was asked from within.

'You ain't in bed yet, Miss Nancarrow, are you?' Jack asked, with the frankness of expression which became his age.

The door opened, and Totty appeared, able to receive visitors still with perfect propriety.

'What is it, Jacky?'

The lad was munching his bread and butter.

'You haven't got a spoonful of that jam left, have you, Miss Nancarrow?' he asked, with a mixture of confidence and shamefacedness.

Totty laughed.

'I dare say I have. But this is a nice time to come asking for jam.

Isn't your father in?'

'Gone out. Says he'll be half an hour. Plenty of time, Miss Nancarrow.

'Come in then.'

Totty closed the door, and produced from her cupboard--a receptacle regarded with profound interest both by Nelly and the maturer Jack--a pot of black currant preserve. She spread some with a liberal hand on the lad's bread, then watched him as he ate, her enjoyment equalling his own. The bread finished, she offered a spoonful of jam pure and simple; it was swallowed with gusto.

'I say, Miss Nancarrow,' remarked Jack, 'I don't half-like going to a new house. I can't see what father wants to move for; we're well enough off here.'

'Why don't you want to go?'

'Well, there's a good many things. I shouldn't mind so much, you know, if you was coming as well.'