dly woman, I always thought her. She called on me the morning we
were leaving; I don't think you saw her. 'I've been through more worries
than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me, laughing. I've
always remembered her words: 'and of all the troubles that come to us in
this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles are the easiest to
bear.'"

"I wish I could think so," said my father.

"She rather irritated me at the time," continued my mother. "I thought
it one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves for other
people's misfortunes. But now I know she spoke the truth."

There was silence between them for awhile. Then said my father in a
cheery tone:

"I've broken with old Hasluck."

"I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later," answered my
mother.

"Hasluck," exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, "is little better
than a thief; I told him so."

"What did he say?" asked my mother.

"Laughed, and said that was better than some people."

My father laughed himself.

I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice. Ever was he a kind
friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having come to
learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I was glad
of it. Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would prefer
to write of him throughout in terms of praise. Yet even were his
good-tempered, thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were good-tempered
and thick-skinned it would be no true ghost of old Noel Hasluck) to
be reading over my shoulder the words as I write them down, I think it
would agree with me--I do not think it would be offended with me (for
ever in his life he was an admirer and a lover of the Truth, being one
of those good fighters capable of respecting even his foe, his enemy,
against whom from ten to four, occasionally a little later, he fought
right valiantly) for saying that of all the men who go down into the
City each day in a cab or 'bus or train, he was perhaps one of the most
unprincipled: and whether that be saying much or little I leave to those
with more knowledge to decide.

To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they would
do him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of "business;"
and in most of his transactions he was successful. "I play a game,"
he would argue, "where cheating is the rule. Nine out of every ten men
round the table are sharpers like myself, and the tenth man is