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don't see," he said at length, "but we've got to face Janet. We might as well teach her to mind first as last." It was a favorite theory with both of them that some day Janet was to be taught to mind. So long as no attempt was made to fix the day on which the experiment was to begin, the thought pleased them and did no harm. But this proposition to undertake the dreadful task at once was a spurt of courage in Thomas Grayson that surprised his wife.

      "Well, Mr. Grayson," she said, with some spirit, "the child's as much yours as she's mine; and if she's to be taught to mind to-morrow, I only hope you'll stay at home and begin."

      To this suggestion the husband made no reply. He got up and began to look under the furniture for the boot-jack, according to his custom of pulling off his boots in the sitting-room every night before going to bed.

      "You see, Charlotte," he said deprecatingly, when he had fished his boot-jack out from under the bureau, "I don't know what to do. If I keep Tom, Lockwood'll have him before the squire, and I'll have to pay costs and go bail for him."

      "I wouldn't do it," said Mrs. Grayson promptly. "We can't afford to have the little we've got put in danger for him. I think you'll have to send him home, and we'll have to get on with Janet. I'm sure we haven't any money to waste. People think we're rich, but we don't feel rich. We're always stinted when we want anything."

      The consideration of the risk of the bail settled the matter with both of them. But, like other respectable people, they settled such questions in duplicate. There are two sets of reasons for any course: the one is the real and decisive motive at the bottom; the other is the pretended reason you impose on yourself and fail to impose on your neighbors. The minister accepts the call to a new church with a larger salary; he tells himself that it is on account of opportunities for increased usefulness that he changes. The politician accepts the office he didn't want out of deference to the wishes of importunate friends. A widower marries for the good of his children. These are not hypocrites imposing on their neighbors; that is a hard thing to do, unless the neighbors really wished to be humbugged in the interest of a theory. But we keep complacency whole by little impostures devised for our private benefit. It is pleasant to believe that we are acting from Sunday motives, but we always keep good substantial week-day reasons for actual service. These will bear hard usage without becoming shiny or threadbare, and they are warranted not to lose their colors in the sunshine.

      "I'm sure," said Grayson, "Tom gets no good here. If anything will do him any good, it will be sending him to the country to shift for himself. It'll make a man of him, maybe." No better Sunday reason for his action could have been found.

      "I think it's your duty to send him home," said his wife, who was more frightened the more she thought of the possible jeopardy of a few hundred dollars from the necessity her husband would be under of going Tom's bail. "A boy like Tom is a great deal better off with his mother," she went on; "and I'm sure we've tried to do what we could for him, and nobody can blame us if he will throw away his chance."

      Thus the question was doubly settled; and as by this time Mr. Grayson's boots were off, and he had set them in the corner and pushed the boot-jack into its place under the bureau with his foot, there was no reason why they should not take the candle and retire.

      But when morning came Grayson was still loth to face the matter of getting rid of Tom, and especially of contending with Janet. Tom found no chance to talk with him before breakfast, for the uncle did not come out of his bedroom till the coffee was on the table, and he was so silent and constrained that Tom felt his doom in advance. Janet tried to draw her father and then her mother into conversation, but failing, she settled back with the remark, "This is the crossest family!" Then she made an attempt on Tom, who began by this time to feel that exhilaration of desperation that was usually the first effect of a catastrophe on his combative spirit, for no man could be more impudent to fate than he. When Janet playfully stole a biscuit from his plate, he pretended to search for it everywhere, and then set in a breakfast-table romp between the two which exasperated the feelings of Grayson and his wife. When they rose from the table the uncle turned severely on his nephew, and said: "Tom – "

      But before he could speak a second word, the nephew, putting Janet aside, interrupted him with:

      "Uncle, I should like to speak with you alone a minute."

      They went into the sitting-room together, and Tom closed the door. Tom was resolved to have the first of it.

      "Uncle, I think I had better go home." Tom was looking out of the window as he spoke. "I got into a row last week through George Lockwood, who persuaded me to play cards for money with Dave Sovine. I don't want to get you into any trouble, so I'm off for Hubbard Township, if you don't object. There's no use of crying over spilt milk, and that's all there is about it."

      "I'm very sorry, Tom, that you won't pay attention to what I've said to you about card-playing." The elder Grayson had seated himself, while Tom now stood nervously listening to his uncle's voice, which was utterly dry and business-like; there was not the slightest quiver of feeling in it. "I've got on in the world without anybody to help me, but I never let myself play cards, and I've always kept my temper. You never make any money by getting mad, and if you're going to make any money, it's better to have people friendly. Now, I have to stand a good deal of abuse. People try to cheat me, and if I take the law they call me a skinflint; but I shouldn't make a cent more by quarreling, and I might lose something. I can't keep you, and have you go on as you do. I've told you that before. You'd better go home. Town will ruin you. A little hard work in the country'll be better, and you won't be gambling away the last cent you've got with a loafer like Dave Sovine, and then threatening to shoot somebody, as you did young Lockwood day before yesterday. Just think what you are coming to, Tom. I've done my best for you, and you'll never be anything but a gambler and a loafer, I'm afraid."

      These hard words sounded harder in the level and self-complacent voice of the senior Grayson, who spoke slowly and with hardly more intensity than there would have been in his depreciation of a horse he was trying to buy. "Just think what you're coming to," he repeated, because he felt that the proper thing to do under the circumstances was to give Tom a good "talking to," and he couldn't think of anything more to say.

      "I don't need you to tell me what I'm coming to," replied Tom, tartly; "I'm coming to the plow-handle and the grubbing-hoe. I'm sorry to give you trouble, but what I feel meanest about is mother and poor Barbara. I know what a fool I've been. But I'm no more a gambler and a loafer than you are. It'll take me longer to work into the law by myself, but I'll get there yet, and you'll see it."

      This was Tom's only adieu to his uncle, on whom confessions of wrong and expressions of gratitude, had he felt like uttering them, would have been wasted. Tom went to his room, thumping his feet defiantly on the stairs. He made a bundle of his clothes, while his uncle sneaked out of the house to avoid a collision with his little daughter, the only person of whom he was afraid.

      Tom told his Aunt Charlotte good-bye with a high head; but when it came to Janet, he put both arms about the child and drew her to him with a fond embrace.

      "You shan't go away, Tom," she said, disengaging herself. "What are you going for? Did they say you must?" By "they" Janet meant her parents, whom she regarded as the allied foes of poor Tom. She looked indignantly at her mother, who had turned her back on this scene of parting.

      "I'm going to help my mother," said Tom; "she's poor, and I oughtn't to have left her."

      He again embraced the child, who began to cry bitterly. "What shall I do when you're gone?" she sobbed on his shoulder. "This house won't be fit to live in. Such a lot of old pokes!" And she stamped her feet and looked poutingly at her mother.

      Tom disengaged himself from her intermittent embraces, and went out with his bundle in his hand.

      He went first to the law-office, and sat his bundle on a chair, and addressed himself to Blackman, who had already arrived, and who was apparently much preoccupied with his writing.

      "Mr. Blackman, I've made a fool of myself by gambling, and Uncle Tom has concluded I can't stay with him any longer. I don't much wonder at it either. But I do hate to give up the study. Couldn't you give me something to do, so that I could earn my board at your house?"

      "No," said the lawyer, looking off horizontally,

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