"Oh, well, it isn't to be wondered at, you see; for his wife has done it for years and years, and he has had a pretty bad time with her, the chaps say."
"But she has not had anything lately, I know," said his mother, quickly, "and Jessie is doing all she can to keep things straight and comfortable at home, though the poor girl can't put her foot to the ground yet."
"Oh, well, Jess has had a pretty good fling, being out at all hours of the night, so that it won't hurt her to be tamed down a bit," remarked Jack. "But all the fellows are sorry for Collins himself. Don't you think you could say a word to him, dad, to make him pull up a bit? They say at the factory that you know a thing or two that might make him pull up short, if you said he must."
Brown looked at his son in surprise. "What have you heard, lad?" he asked.
"Nothing very special, only that—There, I won't say what, for, after all, nobody seems to know anything for certain."
"Of course not, where there is nothing to know," said Brown, laughing. "However, if I come across Collins to-night, when I go out marketing with mother, I will see if I can have a word with him, though he may think I have no business to interfere with him and what he does."
Having received this promise from his father, Jack went out, and then Mrs. Brown said—"Now you must tell me what is troubling you."
"Well, wife, I think it is troubling me, and yet it is only a trifle, after all. I had a letter from our Fanny last night, and I don't know what to make of it."
"A letter from Fanny!" repeated his wife. "What did she want?"
"Well, that I can hardly tell you, for it was a rigmarole about not being loved now; but I could see that Eliza's new dress that her aunt sent was at the bottom of the whole trouble."