oo strained to remain longer at
so high a pitch, the conversation drifted, however awkwardly, to less
personal topics.

"There is a thing I wanted to speak about last night," the organist
said. "Poor old Miss Joliffe is very hard up. She hasn't said a word
to me about it--she never would to anyone--but I happen to know it for a
fact: she _is_ hard up. She is in a chronic state of hard-up-ishness
always, and that we all are; but this is an acute attack--she has her
back against the wall. It is the fag-end of Martin's debts that bother
her; these blood-sucking tradesmen are dunning her, and she hasn't the
pluck to tell them go hang, though they know well enough she isn't
responsible for a farthing. She has got it into her head that she
hasn't a right to keep that flower-and-caterpillar picture so long as
Martin's debts are unpaid, because she could raise money on it. You
remember those people, Baunton and Lutterworth, offered her fifty pounds
for it."

"Yes, I remember," Westray said; "more fools they."

"More fools, by all means," rejoined the organist; "but still they offer
it, and I believe our poor old landlady will come to selling it. `All
the better for her,' you will say, and anyone with an ounce of
common-sense would have sold it long ago for fifty pounds or fifty
pence. But, then, she has no common-sense, and I do believe it would
break her pride and worry her into a fever to part with it. Well, I
have been at the pains to find out what sum of money would pull her
through, and I fancy something like twenty pounds would tide over the
crisis."

He paused a moment, as if he half expected Westray to speak; but the
architect making no suggestion, he went on.

"I didn't know," he said timidly; "I wasn't quite sure whether you had
been here long enough to take much interest in the matter. I had an
idea of buying the picture myself, so that we could still keep it here.
It would be no good offering Miss Euphemia money as a _gift_; she
wouldn't accept it on any condition. I know her quite well enough to be
sure of that. But if I was to offer her twenty pounds for it, and tell
her it must always stop here, and that she could buy it back from me
when she was able, I think she would feel such an offer to be a godsend,
and accept it readily."

"Yes," Westray said dubitatively; "I suppose it couldn't be construed
into attempting to outwit her, could it? It seems rather funny at first
sight to get her to sel