“Hold your cursed jargon! Bonds indeed! Is there no bond between you and your father?”

“Believe me, father, I am very sorry, but I cannot help it. I dare not obey you. You have been very kind to me, and I thank you from my heart—”

“Shut up, you young hypocrite! You have tongue enough for three!—Come, I will give you one chance more! Drop those persons you call your brother and sister, or I drop you.”

“You must drop me, then, father!” said Richard with a sigh.

“Will you do as I tell you?”

“No, sir. I dare not.”

“Then leave the house.”

Richard rose.

“Good-bye, sir,” he said.

“Get out of the house.”

“May I not take my tools, sir?”

“What tools, curse you?”

“I got some tools to bind my lady’s prayer book.”

“She’s taken him in! By Jove, she’s done it, the fool! She’s been keeping him up to it, to enrage me and get rid of him!” said the baronet to himself.

“What do you want them for?” he asked, a little calmer.

“To work at my trade. If you turn me out, I must go back to that.”

“Damn your soul! It never was and never will be anything but a tradesman’s! Damn my soul, if I wouldn’t rather make young Manson my heir than you!—No, by Jove, you shall not have your damned tools! Leave the house. You cannot claim a chair leg in it!”

Richard bowed and went, got his hat, and walked from the house with about thirty shillings in his pocket.

His heart was like a lump of lead, but he was not dismayed. Outside the gate he paused in the middle of the road, thinking. Which way should he go, to his grandfather’s or to Wylder Hall?

He set out, plodding across the fields, to Barbara. There was no Miss Brown for him now.

She was in the garden, sitting in a summerhouse, reading a story. She heard his step, turned, and came out and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew tree.

“What is the matter, Richard?” she said, looking in his face with anxiety. “What has gone wrong?”

“My father has turned me out.”

“Turned you out?”

“Yes. I had to swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went.”

“Of course you did!” cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.

Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes—for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!—she resumed.

“Well, it is no worse for you than before,” she said, “and ever so much better for me!—What are you going to do, Richard?—There are so many things you could turn to now!”

“Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to teach, but I should have to wait too long—and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else.”