getting her experience, that's all; and she ain't the first, and won't be
the last. But if she goes saying much more about me, I go for her for
slander, that's sure."

"On the legal ground that the greater the truth, the greater the libel,
I presume?"

"Confound her!" went on Meeson, without noticing his remark, and
contracting his heavy eyebrows, "there's no end to the trouble she has
brought on me. I quarrelled with my nephew about her, and now she's
dragging my name through the dirt here, and I'll bet the story will go
all over New Zealand and Australia."

"Yes," said Mr. Tombey, "I fancy you will find it take a lot of
choking; and now, Mr. Meeson, with your permission I will say a word,
and try and throw a new light upon a very perplexing matter. It never
seems to have occurred to you what an out-and-out blackguard you are, so
I may as well put it to you plainly. If you are not a thief, you are, at
least, a very well-coloured imitation. You take a girl's book and make
hundreds upon hundreds out of it, and give her fifty. You tie her down,
so as to provide for successful swindling of the same sort, during
future years, and then, when she comes to beg a few pounds of you, you
show her the door. And now you wonder, Mr. Meeson, that respectable
people will have nothing to do with you! Well, now, I tell you, _my_
opinion is that the only society to which you would be really suited is
that of cow-hide. Good morning," and the large young man walked off, his
very moustachios curling with wrath and contempt. Thus, for a second
time, did the great Mr. Meeson hear the truth from the lips of babes and
sucklings, and the worst of it was that he could not disinherit Number
Two as he had Number One.