Two days after this Angela received a wonderful letter. It was addressed to Miss Messenger, and was signed Benjamin Bunker. It ran as follows:

"Honored Miss: As an old and humble friend of your late lamented grandfather, whose loss I can never recover from, nor has it yet been made up to me in any way"—Angela laughed—"I venture to address the following lines in secrecy and confidence, knowing that what ought not to be concealed should be told in the proper quarter, which is you, miss, and none other.

"Everybody in these parts knows me; everybody knows Bunker, your grandfather's right-hand man; wherefore what I write is with no other design than to warn you and to put you on your guard against the deceitful, and such as would abuse your confidingness, being but young—ay, yes, and therefore ignorant of dodges, and easy to come round.

"You have been come round, and that in such a shameful way that I cannot bear myself any longer, and must take the liberty of telling you so, being an old and confidential adviser. Your grandfather used to say that even the brewery wouldn't be where it is now if it hadn't been for me, not to speak of the house property, which is now a profitable investment, with rents regular and respectable tenants, whereas before I took it in hand the houses were out of repair, the rents backward, and the tenants too often such as would bring discredit on any estate. I therefore beg to warn you against two persons—young, I am sorry to say, which makes it worse, because it is only the old who should be thus depraved—whom you have benefited and they are unworthy of it.

"One of them is a certain Miss Kennedy, a dressmaker, at least she says so. The other is—I write this with a blush of indignant shame—my own nephew, whose name is Harry Goslett."

"Bunker!" murmured Angela. "Is this fair to your own tenant and your own nephew?"

"As regards my nephew, you have never inquired about him, and it was out of your kindness and a desire to mark your sense of me, that you gave him a berth in the brewery. That young man, miss, who calls himself a cabinet-maker and doesn't seem to know that a joiner is one thing and a cabinet-maker another, now does the joinery for the brewery, and makes, I am told, as much as two pounds a week, being a handy chap. If you asked me first, I should have told you that he is a lazy, indolent, free and easy, disrespectful, dangerous young man. He has been no one knows where; no one knows where he has worked, except that he talks about America; he looks like a betting man; I believe he drinks of a night; he has been living like a gentleman, doing no work, and I believe, though up to the present I haven't found out for certain, that he has been in trouble and knows what is a convict's feelings when the key is turned. Because he is such a disgrace to the family, for his mother was a Coppin and came of a respectable Whitechapel stock, though not equal to the Bunkers or the Messengers, I went to him and offered him five-and-twenty pounds out of my slender stock to go away and never come back any more to disgrace us. Five-and-twenty pounds I would have given to save Messenger's brewery from such a villain."

"Bunker, Bunker!" murmured Angela again.

"But he wouldn't take the money. You thought to do me a good turn and you done yourself a bad one. I don't know what mischief he has already done in the brewery, and perhaps he is watched; if so it may not yet be too late. Send him about his business. Make him go. You can then consider some other way of making it up to me for all that work for your grandfather whereof you now sweetly reap the benefit.

"The other case, miss, is that of the young woman, Kennedy by name, the dressmaker."

"What of her, Bunker?" asked Angela.

"I hear that you are givin' her your custom, not knowing, maybe, the kind of woman she is nor the mischief she's about. She's got a house of mine on false pretences."

"Really, Bunker," said Angela, "you are too bad."

"Otherwise I wouldn't let her have it, and at the end of the year out she goes. She has persuaded a lot of foolish girls, once contented with their lowly lot and thankful for their wages and their work, nor inclined to grumble when hours were long and work had to be done. She has promised them the profits, and meantime she feeds them up so that their eyes swell out with fatness. She gives them short hours, and sends them out into the garden to play games. Games, if you please, and short hours for such as them. In the evening it's worse, for then they play and sing and dance, having young men to caper about with them, and you can hear them half a mile up the Mile End Road, so that it is a scandal to Stepney Green, once respectable, and the police will probably interfere. Where she came from, who she was, how she got her money, we don't know. Some say one thing, some say another; whatever they say it's a bad way. The worst is that when she smashes, as she must, because no ladies who respect virtue and humble-mindedness with contentment will employ her, that the other dressmakers and shops will have nothing to do with her girls, so that what will happen to them no one can tell.

"I thought it right, miss, to give you this information, because it is certain that if you withdraw your support from these two undeserving people, they must go away, which as a respectable Stepney man, I unite in wishing may happen before long, when the girls shall go on again as before and leave off dancing and singing to the rich, and be humble and contented with the trust to which they were born.

"And as regards the kindness you were meditating toward me, miss, I think that I may say that none of my nephews—one of whom is a Radical, and another a captain in the Salvation Army—deserves to receive any benefits at your hands, the least of all that villain who works in the brewery. Wherefore, it may take the form of something for myself. And it is not for me to tell you, miss, how much that something ought to be for a man in years, of respectable station, and once the confidential friend of your grandfather, and prevented thereby from saving as much as he had otherwise a right to expect.

"I remain, miss, your humble servant,

"Benjamin Bunker."

"This," said Angela, "is a very impudent letter. How shall we bring him to book for it?"

When she learned, as she speedily did, the great mystery about the houses and the Coppin property, she began to understand the letter, the contents of which she kept to herself for the present. This was perhaps wise, for the theory implied rather than stated in the letter, that both should be ordered to go, for if one only was turned out of work both would stay. This theory made her smile and blush, and pleased her, insomuch that she was not so angry as she might otherwise have been, and should have been, with the crafty double-dealer who wrote the letter.

It happened that Mr. Bunker had business on Stepney Green that morning, while Angela was reading the letter. She saw him from the window, and could not resist the temptation of inviting him to step in. He came, not in the least abashed, and with no tell-tale signal of confusion in his rosy cheeks.

"Come in, Mr. Bunker," said Angela. "Come in; I want five minutes' talk with you. This way, please, where we can be alone."

She led him into the refectory, because Daniel Fagg was in the drawing room.

"I have been thinking, Mr. Bunker," she said, "how very, very fortunate I was to fall into such hands as yours, when I came to Stepney."

"You were, miss, you were. That was a fall, as one may say, which meant a rise."

"I am sure it did, Mr. Bunker. You do not often come to see us, but I hope you approve of our plans."

"As for that," he replied, "it isn't my business. People come to me and I put them in the way. How they run in the way is not my business to inquire. As for you and your girls, now, if you make the concern go, you may thank me for it. If you don't, why, it isn't my fault."

"Very well put, indeed, Mr. Bunker. In six months the first year, for which I paid the rent, will come to an end."

"It will."

"We shall then have to consider a fresh agreement. I was thinking, Mr. Bunker, that, seeing how good a man you are, and how generous, you would like to make your rent, like the wages of the girls, depend upon the profits of the business."

"What?" he asked.

Angela repeated her proposition.

He rose, buttoned his coat, and put on his hat.

"Rent depend on profits? Is the girl mad? Rent comes first and before anything else. Rent is even before taxes; and as for rates—but you're mad. My rent depend on profits! Rent, miss, is sacred. Remember that."

"Oh!" said Angela.

"And what is more," he added, "people who don't pay up get sold up. It's a Christian duty to sell 'em up. I couldn't let off my own nephews."

"As for one of them, you would like to sell him up, would you not, Mr. Bunker?"

"I would," he replied truthfully. "I should like to see him out of the place. You know what I told you when you came. Have nothing to do, I said, with that chap. Keep him at arm's length, for he is a bad lot. Now you see what he has brought you to. Singin', dancin', playin', laughin', every night; respectable ladies driven away from your shop; many actually kept out of the place; expenses doubled; all through him. What's more—bankruptcy ahead! Don't I know that not a lady in Stepney or Mile End comes here? Don't I know that you depend upon your West End connection? When that goes, where are you? And all for the sake of that pink and white chap! Well, when one goes, the other'll go too, I suppose. Rent out of profits, indeed! No, no, Miss; it'll do you good to learn a little business, even if you do get sold up."

"Thank you, Mr. Bunker. Do you know, I do not think you will ever have the pleasure of selling me up?"

She laughed so merrily that he felt he hated her quite as much as he hated his nephew. Why, six months before, no one laughed in Stepney at all; and to think that any one should laugh at him, would have been an impossible dream.

"You laugh," he said gravely, "and yet you are on the brink of ruin. Where's your character? Wrapped up with the character of that young man. Where's your business! Drove away—by him. You laugh. Ah! I'm sorry for you, miss, because I thought at one time you were a plain-spoken, honest sort of young woman; if I'd ha' known that you meant to use my house—mine, the friend of all the respectable tradesmen—for such wicked fads as now disgrace it, I'd never ha' taken you for a tenant."

"Oh yes, you would, Mr. Bunker." She laughed again, but not merrily this time. "Oh yes—you would. You forget the fittings and the furniture, the rent paid in advance, and the half-crown an hour for advice. Is there anything, I should like to know, that you would not do for half a crown an hour?"

He made no reply.

"Why, again, do you hate your nephew? What injury have you done him that you should bear him such ill will?"

This, which was not altogether a shot in the dark, went straight to Mr. Bunker's heart. He said nothing, but put on his hat and rushed out. Clearly these two, between them, would drive him mad.