’Disgrace! what’s the matter with the hat?  It’s the fashionable shape.’

Godwin mastered his wrath, and turned contemptuously away.  But Oliver had been touched in a sensitive place; he was eager to defend himself.

‘I can’t see what you’re finding fault with,’ he exclaimed.  ‘Everybody wears this shape.’

’And isn’t that quite sufficient reason why anyone who respects himself should choose something as different as possible?  Everybody!  That is to say, all the fools in the kingdom.  It’s bad enough to follow when you can’t help it, but to imitate asses gratuitously is the lowest depth of degradation.  Don’t you know that that is the meaning of vulgarity?  How you can offer such an excuse passes my comprehension.  Have you no self?  Are you made, like this hat, on a pattern with a hundred thousand others?’

‘You and I are different,’ said Oliver, impatiently.  ’I am content to be like other people.’

’And I would poison myself with vermin-killer if I felt any risk of such contentment!  Like other people?  Heaven forbid and forfend!  Like other people?  Oh, what a noble ambition!’

The loud passionate voice summoned Mrs. Peak from an adjacent room.

‘Godwin!  Godwin!’ she remonstrated.  ’Whatever is it?  Why should you put yourself out so?’

She was a short and slender woman, with an air of gentility, independent of her badly made and long worn widow’s dress.  Self-possession marked her manner, and the even tones in which she spoke gave indication of a mild, perhaps an unemotional, temperament.

Oliver began to represent his grievance.

’What harm is there, if I choose to wear a hat that’s in fashion?  I pay for it out of my own’—­

But he was interrupted by a loud visitor’s knock at the front door, distant only a few paces.  Mrs. Peak turned with a startled look.  Godwin, dreading contact with friends of the family, strode upstairs.  When the door was opened, there appeared the smiling countenance of Andrew Peak; he wore the costume of a traveller, and by his side stood a boy of ten, too plainly his son.

‘Well, Grace!’ was his familiar greeting, as the widow drew back.  ’I told you you’d ‘ev the pleasure of seem’ me again before so very long.  Godwin at ’ome with you, I s’pose?  Thet you, Noll?  ’Ow do, my bo-oy?  ’Ere’s yer cousin Jowey.  Shike ’ands, Jowey bo-oy!  Sorry I couldn’t bring my old lady over this time, Grace; she sends her respects, as usual.  ‘Ow’s Charlotte?  Bloomin’, I ‘ope?’

He had made his way into the front parlour, dragging the youngster after him.  Having deposited his handbag and umbrella on the sofa, he seated himself in the easy-chair, and began to blow his nose with vigour.

‘Set down, Jowey; set down, bo-oy!  Down’t be afride of your awnt.’

‘Oi ain’t afride!’ cried the youth, in a tone which supported his assertion.