“Keep it for your coffin,” said Robinson fiercely, and passed on.  “How hard they make honesty to a poor fellow!  I was a fool for asking for it when I might have taken it.  What was there to hinder me?  Honesty, my lass, you are bitter.”

Presently he came to the suburbs and there was a small wooden cottage.  The owner, a common laborer, was repairing it as well as he could.  Robinson asked him very timidly if he could spare a couple of square feet off a board he was sawing.  “What for?” Robinson showed his paintpot and brushes, and told him how he was at a stand-still for want of a board.  “It is only a loan of it I ask,” said he.

The man measured the plank carefully, and after some hesitation cut off a good piece.  “I can spare that much,” said he; “poor folk should feel for one another.”

“I’ll bring it back, you may depend,” said Robinson.

“You needn’t trouble,” replied the laboring man with a droll wink, as much as to say, “Gammon!”

When Robinson returned to the skeptical shopkeeper with a board on which oak, satin-wood, walnut, etc., were imitated to the life in squares, that worthy gave a start and betrayed his admiration, and Robinson asked him five shillings more than he would if the other had been more considerate.  In short, before evening the door was painted a splendid imitation of walnut-wood, the shopkeeper was enchanted, and Robinson had fifteen shillings handed over to him.  He ran and got Mr. Eden’s ring out of pawn, and kissed it and put it on; next he liberated his hat.  He slept better this night than the last.  “One more such day and I shall have enough to pay my expenses to Bathurst.”

He turned, out early and went into the town.  He went into the street where he had worked last evening, and when he came near this door there was a knot of persons round it.  Robinson joined them.  Presently one of the shop-boys cried out, “Why, here he is; this is the painter!”

Instantly three or four hands were laid on Robinson.  “Come and paint my door.”

“No, come and paint mine!”

“No, mine!”

Tom had never been in such request since he was an itinerant quack.  His sly eye twinkled, and this artist put himself up to auction then and there.  He was knocked down to a tradesman in the same street—­twenty-one shillings the price of this door (mock mahogany).  While he was working commissions poured in and Robinson’s price rose, the demand for him being greater than the supply.  The mahogany door was really a chef-d’oeuvre.  He came home triumphant with thirty shillings in his pocket, he spread them out on the kitchen table and looked at them with a pride and a thrill of joy money never gave him before.  He had often closed the shutters and furtively spread out twice as many sovereigns, but they were only his, these shillings were his own.  And they were not only his own but his own by labor.  Each sacred shilling represented so much virtue; for industry is a virtue.  He looked at them with a father’s pride.