Let un do what they like, they can't put Tom Gaunt about; he can get work anywhere--Tom Gaunt can, an' don't you forget that, old man." The old man, placing his thin brown hands on his knees, was silent.

And thoughts passed through and through him.

'If so be as Tom goes, there'll be no one as'll take me in for less than three bob a week.

Two bob a week, that's what I'll 'ave to feed me--Two bob a week--two bob a week! But if so be's I go with Tom, I'll 'ave to reg'lar sit down under he for me bread and butter.' And he contemplated his son.
"Where are you goin', then ?" he said.
Tom Gaunt rustled the greenish paper he was reading, and his little, hard gray eyes fixed his father.
"Who said I was going ?" Old Gaunt, smoothing and smoothing the lined, thin cheeks of the parchmenty, thin-nosed face that Frances Freeland had thought to be almost like a gentleman's, answered: "I thart you said you was goin'." "You think too much, then--that's what 'tis.

You think too much, old man." With a slight deepening of the sardonic patience in his face, old Gaunt rose, took a bowl and spoon down from a shelf, and very slowly proceeded to make himself his evening meal.