"I can't help myself," he groans out; "my wife is so ill, she can't
attend to the child. Mrs. Mackenzie manages the house for me--and--here!
Tommy, Tommy! papa is coming!" Tommy has been crying again; and flinging
open the studio door, Clive calls out, and dashes upstairs.
I hear scuffling, stamping, loud voices, poor Tommy's scared little pipe
--Clive's fierce objurgations, and the Campaigner's voice barking out--
"Do, sir, do! with my child suffering in the next room. Behave like a
brute to me, do. He shall not go! He shall not have the hat"--"He shall"
--"Ah--ah!" A scream is heard. It is Clive tearing a child's hat out of
the Campaigner's hands, with which, and a flushed face, he presently
rushes downstairs, bearing little Tommy on his shoulder.
"You see what I am come to, Pen," he says with a heartbroken voice,
trying, with hands all of a tremble, to tie the hat on the boy's head. He
laughs bitterly at the ill success of his endeavours. "Oh, you silly
papa!" laughs Tommy, too.
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