one's emptiness. Now she toddles; she is digesting
it rapidly. The last performance of one's purse is rarely so pleasant as
that. I owe it to her that I made the discovery in time.'

In this manner I also made the discovery that my father had no further
supply of money, none whatever. How it had run out without his remarking
it, he could not tell; he could only assure me that he had become aware
of the fact while searching vainly for a coin to bestow on the
beggar-girl. I despatched a letter attested by a notary of the city,
applying for money to the banker to whom Colonel Goodwin had introduced
me on my arrival on the Continent. The money came, and in the meantime we
had formed acquaintances and entertained them; they were chiefly half-pay
English military officers, dashing men. One, a Major Dykes, my father
established in our hotel, and we carried him on to Paris, where,
consequent upon our hospitalities, the purse was again deficient.

Two reasons for not regretting it were adduced by my father; firstly,
that it taught me not to despise the importance of possessing money;
secondly, that we had served our country by assisting Dykes, who was on
the scent of a new and terrible weapon of destruction, which he believed
to be in the hands of the French Government. Major Dykes disappeared on
the scent, but we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had done our
best toward saving the Navy of Great Britain from being blown out of
water. Temple and I laughed over Major Dykes, and he became our puppet
for by-play, on account of his enormous whiskers, his passion for strong
drinks, and his air of secresy. My father's faith in his patriotic
devotedness was sufficient to withhold me from suspicions of his
character. Whenever my instinct, or common sense, would have led me to
differ with my father in opinion fun supervened; I was willing that
everything in the world should be as he would have it be, and took up
with a spirit of laughter, too happy in having won him, in having fished
him out of the deep sea at one fling of the net, as he said, to care for
accuracy of sentiment in any other particular.

Our purse was at its lowest ebb; he suggested no means of replenishing
it, and I thought of none. He had heard that it was possible to live in
Paris upon next to nothing with very great luxury, so we tried it; we
strolled through the lilac aisles among bonnes and babies, attended
military spectacles, rode on omnibuses, dined on the