“But your mother will beat you,” said Clytie.
“Wot do I care?”
“And your father, you sweet boy?” asked Kent.
“Aint got none.”
“Never had one?” continued Kent.
“No; mother aint that sort. Blamed glad.”
“Here, you'd better run away,” said Clytie hurriedly. “Keep your shilling and make yourself as ill as you like with it. Come the day after to-morrow—Friday. Can you remember? It's unnecessary to request you not to wash between then and now. Go on. Good-bye. Out you get.”
The boy took up the remains of his cap and went, with an air of relief, out of the room.
“What a little brute!” said Kent. “Why don't you try to reform him—make him human?”
“He is human,” cried Clytie with some warmth. “That's why I cultivate him. Delightfully human! Refreshing! As for reforming him”—with a shrug of her shoulders—“I am not a Sunday-school teacher. I have nothing to do with the submerged tenth; let the good respectable folks who have submerged them raise them with their polite and respectable hands. I am an artist—a student of life—what you will. Each one to his trade. Perhaps when I have got what I want out of Jack it may amuse me to show him the desirability of not 'lamming cats' bloomin' 'eds open with a chopper.' I don't know—I'm not altogether devoid of moral sense. Winifred's tender heart may be touched, and between the two of us we may turn him out a mild-eyed journeyman carpenter, a member of the Y. M. C. A., a model of all the virtues. But I very much doubt it. He has vice in his blood. But perhaps I am wounding some of your susceptibilities, Mr. Kent? You may be a social reformer, and keener than I on these matters. If so, pardon me. We artists are privileged, you know, to view life from our own standpoint.”