The Princess took her seat with an air of much dejection.  Her pretty lips grew mutinous; she pushed her plate away.

‘No supper for me!  The idea of cold meat without a pickle.’

‘What’s the time?’ cried Daniel.  ’Not closing time yet.  I can get a pickle at the “Duke’s Arms.”  Give me a glass, Mrs. Mutimer.’

Alice looked up slily, half smiling, half doubtful.

‘You may go,’ she said.  ’I like to see strong men make themselves useful.’

Dan rose, and was off at once.  He returned with the tumbler full of pickled walnuts.  Alice emptied half a dozen into her plate, and put one of them whole into her mouth.  She would not have been a girl of her class if she had not relished this pungent dainty.  Fish of any kind, green vegetables, eggs and bacon, with all these a drench of vinegar was indispensable to her.  And she proceeded to eat a supper scarcely less substantial than that which had appeased her brother’s appetite.  Start not, dear reader; the Princess is only a subordinate heroine, and happens, moreover, to be a living creature.

‘Won’t you take a walnut, Miss Vine?’ Daniel asked, pushing the tumbler to the quiet girl, who had scarcely spoken through the meal.

She declined the offered dainty, and at the same time rose from the table, saying aside to Mrs. Mutimer that she must be going.

‘Yes, I suppose you must,’ was the reply.  ’Shall you have to sit up with Jane?’

‘Not all night, I don’t expect.’

Richard likewise left his place, and, when she offered to bid him good-night, said that he would walk a little way with her.  In the passage above, which was gas-lighted, he found his hat on a nail, and the two left the house together.

‘Don’t you really mind?’ Emma asked, looking up into his face as they took their way out of the square.

’Not I!  I can get a job at Baldwin’s any day.  But I dare say I shan’t want one long.’

‘Not want work?’

He laughed.

’Work?  Oh, plenty of work; but perhaps not the same kind.  We want men who can give their whole time to the struggle—­to go about lecturing and the like.  Of course, it isn’t everybody can do it.’

The remark indicated his belief that he knew one man not incapable of leading functions.

‘And would they pay you?’ Emma inquired, simply.

‘Expenses of that kind are inevitable,’ he replied.

Issuing into the New North Road, where there were still many people hastening one way and the other, they turned to the left, crossed the canal—­black and silent—­and were soon among narrow streets.  Every corner brought a whiff of some rank odour, which stole from closed shops and warehouses, and hung heavily on the still air.  The public-houses had just extinguished their lights, and in the neighbourhood of each was a cluster of lingering men and women, merry or disputatious.  Mid-Easter was inviting repose and festivity; to-morrow would see culmination of riot, and after that it would only depend upon pecuniary resources how long the muddled interval between holiday and renewed labour should drag itself out.