“I don’t like the look of it, Polly,” he remarked; with a nervous attempt to be severe.

“All right, dad; then don’t like the look of it.  The watch is good enough for me.”

It took Mr. Sparkes two or three minutes to understand this joke.  Whilst he was reflecting upon it a thought suddenly passed through his mind, which startled him by its suggestiveness.

“Polly!”

“Well?”

“It ain’t your Uncle Clover, is it?”

The girl laughed loudly as if at a preposterous question.

“Him?  Why, I’ve as good as forgot there was such a man!  What do you mean?  Why, I shouldn’t know him if I saw him.  What made you think of that?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Who knows when and where he may turn up, or what he’ll do?”

“That’s a good ’un!  My Uncle Clover indeed!  Whatever put that into your ’ead?”

Her ejaculations of wonder and disdain continued until the close of the interview, and Mr. Sparkes went his way, convinced that Polly was being pursued by some wealthy man, probably quite unprincipled—­the kind of man who frequents “proper rest’rants” and sits in the stalls at “theaytres,” where, doubtless, Polly had made his acquaintance.  After brooding a day or two on this idea he procured a sheet of the cheapest note-paper and sat down in his bedroom, high up at Chaffey’s, to compose a letter for his daughter’s behoof.

“DEAR POLLY,

“I write you these few lines to say that the more I think about you and your way of carrying on the less I like the look of it, and the sooner I make that plain to you the better for both of us, and I’m sure you’ll think the same.  You are that strong-headed, my girl; but listen to the warnings of experience, who have seen a great deal of the wicked world, and cannot hope to see much more of it at my present age.  There will come a day when you will wish that you could hear of me by a note to Chaffey’s, but such will not be.  Before it’s too late I take up the pen to say these few words, which is this:  I have always been a respectable and a saving man, which I hope to be until I am no more.  What I mean to say is this, Chaffey’s is not what it used to be.  But I have laid by, and when it comes to the solemn hour then Mr. Walker has promised to make my will.  All I want to say is that there may be more than you think for and if you are respectable I think it most likely all will be yours.  But listen to this, if you disgrace yourself, my girl, not one halfpenny nor yet one sixpenny piece will you receive from

“Your affectionate father
“EBENEZER SPARKES

“P.S.—­This is wrote in a very serious mind.”