Miss Peckover kept going up and down between the kitchen and the front-door.  Down below, Jane was cleaning a copper kettle.  Clem, who had her sweetest morsel of cruelty yet in store, had devised this pleasant little job as a way of keeping the child employed till all was quiet.

She had just come down to watch the progress of the work, and to give a smart rap or two on the toiling fingers, when a heavy footstep in the passage caused her to dart upstairs again.  It was Bob Hewett, returned from his evening recreations.

‘Oh, that’s you, is it?’ cried Clem.  ’Come down; I want to speak to you.’

‘Wait till to-morrow,’ answered Bob, advancing towards the stairs.

‘Wait! we’ll see about that!’

She sprang forward, and with a prompt exertion of muscle, admirable in its way, whirled Bob round and dragged him to the head of the kitchen flight.  The young fellow took it in good part, and went down with her.

‘You go up into the passage,’ said Clem to her servant, and was immediately obeyed.

‘Now,’ resumed Miss Peckover, when she had closed the door, ’who have you been goin’ about with to-night?’

‘What are you talking about?’ returned Bob, who had seated himself on the table, and was regarding Clem jocosely.  ’I’ve been with some pals, that’s all.’

‘Pals! what sort o’ pals?  Do you call Pennyloaf Candy one o’ your pals?’

She stood before him in a superb attitude, her head poised fiercely, her arms quivering at her sides, all the stature and vigour of her young body emphasised by muscular strain.

‘Pennyloaf Candy!’ Bob repeated, as if in scorn of the person so named.  ’Get on with you!  I’m sick of hearing you talk about her.  Why I haven’t seen her not these three weeks.’

‘It’s a ——­ lie!’ Clem’s epithet was too vigorous for reproduction.  ‘Sukey Jollop saw you with her down by the meat-market, an’ Jeck Bartley saw you too.’

‘Jeck did?’ He laughed with obstreperous scorn.  ’Why, Jeck’s gone to Homerton to his mother till Saturday night.  Don’t be such a bloomin’ fool!  Just because Suke Jollop’s dead nuts on me, an’ I won’t have nothin’ to say to her, she goes tellin’ these bloomin’ lies.  When I see her next, I’ll make her go down on her marrow-bones an’ beg my pardon.  See if I don’t just!’

There was an engaging frankness in Bob’s way of defending himself which evidently impressed Miss Peckover, though it did not immediately soothe her irritation.  She put her arms a-kimbo, and examined him with a steady suspicion which would have disconcerted most young men.  Bob, however, only laughed more heartily.  The scene was prolonged.  Bob had no recourse to tenderness to dismiss the girl’s jealousy.  His self-conceit was supreme, and had always stood him in such stead with the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were ‘dead nuts on him,’ that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas.  ‘Don’t be a bloomin’ fool!’ was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour’s wrangling, Clem abandoned her hostile attitude, and eyed him with a savage kind of admiration.