He had breakfasted, and was smoking his pipe as he wrote a letter, when Mrs. Hopper announced the visit, by appointment, of her brother-in-law, Allchin.  There entered a short, sturdy, red-headed young fellow, in a Sunday suit of respectable antiquity; his features were rude, his aspect dogged; but a certain intelligence showed in his countenance, and a not unamiable smile responded to the bluff heartiness of Warburton’s greeting.  By original calling, Allchin was a grocer’s assistant, but a troublesome temper had more than once set him adrift, the outcast of grocerdom, to earn a living as best he could by his vigorous thews, and it was in one of these intervals that, having need of a porter at the works, Warburton had engaged him, on Mrs. Hopper’s petition.  After a month or so of irreproachable service, Allchin fought with a foreman, and took his discharge.  The same week, Mrs. Allchin presented him with their first child; the family fell into want; Mrs. Hopper (squeezed between door and jamb) drew her master’s attention to the lamentable case, and help was of course forthcoming.  Then, by good luck, Allchin was enabled to resume his vocation; he got a place at a grocer’s in Fulham Road, and in a few weeks presented himself before his benefactor, bringing half-a-crown as a first instalment toward the discharge of his debt; for only on this condition had he accepted the money.  Half a year elapsed without troublesome incident; the man made regular repayment in small sums; then came the disaster which Mrs. Hopper had yesterday announced.

“Well, Allchin,” cried Warburton, “what’s the latest?”

Before speaking, the other pressed his lips tightly together and puffed out his cheeks, as if it cost him an effort to bring words to the surface.  His reply came forth with explosive abruptness.

“Lost my place at Boxon’s, sir.”

“And how’s that?”

“It happened last Saturday, sir.  I don’t want to make out as I wasn’t at all to blame.  I know as well as anybody that I’ve got a will of my own.  But we’re open late, as perhaps you know, sir, on Saturday night, and Mr. Boxon—­well, it’s only the truth—­he’s never quite himself after ten o’clock.  I’d worked from eight in the morning to something past midnight—­of course I don’t think nothing of that, ’cause it’s reg’lar in the trade.  But—­well, in come a customer, sir, a woman as didn’t rightly know what she wanted; and she went out without buying, and Mr. Boxon he see it, and he come up to me and calls me the foulest name he could turn his tongue to.  And so—­well, sir, there was unpleasantness, as they say—­”

He hesitated, Warburton eyeing him with a twinkle of subdued amusement.

“A quarrel, in fact, eh?”

“It did about come to that, sir!”

“You lost your temper, of course.”

“That’s about the truth, sir.”

“And Boxon turned you out?”

Allchin looked hurt.

“Well, sir, I’ve no doubt he’d have liked to, but I was a bit beforehand with him.  When I see him last, he was settin’ on the pavement, sir, rubbin’ his ’ead.”