But the surprise of the two dames grew rapidly as they heard Tom’s audacity towards the country aristocrat.

“Impudent wretch!” moaned Mrs. Heale to herself.  “He’d drive away an angel if he came into the shop.”

“Oh, ma! hear how they are going on now.”

“I can’t bear it, my dear.  This man will be the ruin of us.  His manners are those of the pot-house, when the cloven foot is shown, which it’s his nature as a child of wrath, and we can’t expect otherwise.”

“Oh, ma! do you hear that Mr. Trebooze has asked him to dinner?”

“Nonsense!”

But it was true.

“Well! if there ain’t the signs of the end of the world, which is?  All the years your poor father has been here, and never so much as send him a hare, and now this young penniless interloper; and he to dine at Trebooze off purple and fine linen.”

“There is not much of that there, ma; I’m sure they are poor enough, for all his pride; and as for her—­”

“Yes, my dear; and as for her, though we haven’t married squires, my dear, yet we haven’t been squires’ housemaids, and have adorned our own station, which was good enough for us, and has no need to rise out of it, nor ride on Pharaoh’s chariot-wheels after filthy lucre—­”

Miss Heale hated poor Mrs. Trebooze with a bitter hatred, because she dreamed insanely that, but for her, she might have secured Mr. Trebooze for herself.  And though her ambition was now transferred to the unconscious Tom, that need not make any difference in the said amiable feeling.

But that Tom was a most wonderful person, she had no doubt.  He had conquered her heart—­so she informed herself passionately again and again; as was very necessary, seeing that the passion, having no real life of its own, required a good deal of blowing to keep it alight.  Yes, he had conquered her heart, and he was conquering all hearts likewise.  There must be some mystery about him—­there should be.  And she settled in her novel-bewildered brain, that Tom must be a nobleman in disguise—­probably a foreign prince exiled for political offences.  Bah! perhaps too many lines have been spent on the poor little fool; but as such fools exist, and people must be as they are, there is no harm in drawing her; and in asking, too—­Who will help those young girls of the middle class who, like Miss Heale, are often really less educated than the children of their parents’ workmen; sedentary, luxurious, full of petty vanity, gossip, and intrigue, without work, without purpose, except that of getting married to any one who will ask them—­bewildering brain and heart with novels, which, after all, one hardly grudges them; for what other means have they of learning that there is any fairer, nobler life possible, at least on earth, than that of the sordid money-getting, often the sordid puffery and adulteration, which is the atmosphere of their home?  Exceptions there are, in thousands, doubtless; and the families of the