‘I ain’t had a mouthful past my lips since last night, I ain’t!’ he sobbed.  ’It’s ’ard on a feller as used to have his meals regular.  I’ll murder Suke yet, see if I don’t!  I’ll have her life!  She met me last night and gave me this black eye as you see—­she did!  It’s ‘ard on a feller.’

’You mean to say as she ‘it you?’ cried Pennyloaf.

Bob chuckled, thrust his hands into his pockets, spread himself out.  His own superiority was so gloriously manifest.

‘Suppose you try it on with me, Penny!’ he cried.

‘You’d give me something as I should remember,’ she answered, smirking, the good little slavey.

‘Shouldn’t wonder if I did,’ assented Bob.

Mr. Bartley’s pressing hunger was satisfied with some bread and butter and a cup of tea.  Whilst taking a share of the meal, Bob brought a small box on to the table; it had a sliding lid, and inside were certain specimens of artistic work with which he was wont to amuse himself when tired of roaming the streets in jovial company.  Do you recollect that, when we first made Bob’s acquaintance, he showed Sidney Kirkwood a medal of his own design and casting?  His daily work at die-sinking had of course supplied him with this suggestion, and he still found pleasure in work of the same kind.  In days before commercialism had divorced art and the handicrafts, a man with Bob’s distinct faculty would have found encouragement to exercise it for serious ends; as it was, he remained at the semi-conscious stage with regard to his own aptitudes, and cast leaden medals just as a way of occupying his hands when a couple of hours hung heavy on them.  Partly with the thought of amusing the dolorous Jack, yet more to win laudation, he brought forth DOW a variety of casts and moulds and spread them on the table.  His latest piece of work was a medal in high relief bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded with a wreath.  Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his father foam at the mouth.  True, he might have found subjects artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, and the English people.

Jack Bartley, having dried his eyes and swallowed his bread and butter, considered the medal with much attention.

‘I say,’ he remarked at length, ‘will you give me this, Bob?’

‘I don’t mind, You can take it if you like.’

‘Thanks!’

Jack wrapped it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket, and before long rose to take leave of his friends.

‘I only wish I’d got a wife like you,’ he observed at the door, as he saw Pennyloaf bending over the two children, recently put to bed.

Pennyloaf’s eyes gleamed at the compliment, and she turned them to her husband.

‘She’s nothing to boast of,’ said Bob, judicially and masculinely.  ‘All women are pretty much alike.’