“Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come off as easily,” returned the whelp, “if it hadn’t been for me.”

The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go on.

“ I persuaded her,” he said, with an edifying air of superiority. “I was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby’s pipe out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn’t it?”

“It was charming, Tom!”