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There was only one blot–but how foul!–on Eli Machin’s career, and that had been dropped by his daughter Miriam, when, defying his authority, she married a scene-shifter at Hanbridge Theatre. The atrocious idea of being connected with the theatre had rendered him speechless for a time. He could but endure it in the most awful silence that ever hid passionate feeling. Then one day he had burst out, ‘The wench is no better than a tiddy-fol-lol!’ Only this solitary phrase–nothing else.

What a tiddy-fol-lol was no one quite knew; but the word, getting about, stuck to him, and for some weeks boys used to shout it after him in the streets, until he caught one of them, and in thirty seconds put an end to the practice. Thenceforth Miriam, with all hers, was dead to him. When her husband expired of consumption, Eli Machin saw the avenging arm of the Lord in action; and when her boy grew to be a source of painful anxiety to her, he said to himself that the wrath of Heaven was not yet cooled towards this impious daughter. The passage of fifteen years had apparently in no way softened his resentment.

The challenged lad in Mynors’ yard slowly approached the slip-house door, and halted before Eli Machin, grinning.

‘Well, young un,’ the old man said absently, ‘what dost want?’

‘Tiddy-fol-lol, grandfeyther,’ the child drawled in his silly, irritating voice, and added: ‘They said I darena say it to ye.’

Without and instant’s hesitation Eli Machin raised his still powerful arm, and, catching the boy under the ear, knocked him down. The other boys yelled with unaffected pleasure and ran away.

‘Get up, and be off wi’ ye. Ye dunna belong to this bank,’ said Eli Machin in cold anger to the lad. But the lad did not stir; the lad’s eyes were closed, and he lay white on the stones.

Eli Machin bent down, and peered through his spectacles at the prone form upon which the mid-day sun was beating.

‘It’s Miriam’s boy!’ he ejaculated under his breath, and looked round as if in inquiry–the yard was empty. Then with quick decision he picked up this limp and inconvenient parcel of humanity and hastened–ran–with it out of the yard into the road.

Down the road he ran, turned to the left into Clowes Street, and stopped before a row of small brown cottages. At the open door of one of these cottages a woman sat sewing. She was rather stout and full-bosomed, with a fair, fresh face, full of sense and peace; she looked under thirty, but was older.

‘Here’s thy Tommy, Miriam,’ said Eli Machin shortly. ‘He give me some of his sauce, and I doubt I’ve done him an injury.’

The woman dropped her sewing.

‘Eh, dear!’ she cried, ‘is that lad o’ mine in mischief again? I do hope he’s no limb brokken.’

‘It in’na that,’ said the old man, ‘but he’s dazed-like. Better lay him on th’ squab.’

She calmly took Tommy and placed him gently down on the check-covered sofa under the window. ‘Come in, father, do.’

The man obeyed, astonished at the entire friendliness of this daughter, whom, though he had frequently seen her, he had never spoken to for more than ten years. Her manner, at once filial and quite natural, perfectly ignored the long breach, and disclosed no trace of animosity.

Father and daughter examined the unconscious child. Pale, pulseless, cold, he lay on the sofa like a corpse except for the short, faint breaths which he drew through his blue lips.

‘I doubt I’ve killed him,’ said Eli.

‘Nay, nay, father!’ And her face actually smiled. This supremacy of the soul against years of continued misfortune lifted her high above him, and he suddenly felt himself an inferior creature.

‘I’ll go for th’ doctor,’ he said.

‘Nay! I shall need ye.’ And she put her head out of the window. ‘Mrs. Walley, will ye let your Lucy run quick for th’ club doctor? my Tommy’s hurt.’