im, the words were yet spontaneous.

He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.

"Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool," he assented, "but I'd
like myself better if I could talk about something else than business,
and didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell."

"You have a daughter?" asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond
of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to
disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.

"I won't tell you about 'er. But I'll just bring 'er to see you now and
then, ma'am, if you don't mind," answered Mr. Hasluck. "She don't often
meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good."

My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her
question, replied to it himself.

"You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me," he assured
her quite good-temperedly; "nobody ever believes she's my daughter,
except me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is. Freak o'
nature, I call it."

"We shall be delighted," explained my mother.

"Well, you will when you see 'er," replied Mr. Hasluck, quite
contentedly.

He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'
susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have
his way in all things.

"No squanderin' it on the 'eathen," was his parting injunction as I left
the room; "you spend that on a Christian tradesman."

It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that half-crown
of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived from a new
pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which would then be all
my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all less exalted visions
concerning the disposal of chance coins coming into my small hands. But
on this occasion I was left free to decide for myself.

The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of
the bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.

"You must learn to think for yourself," said my father, who spoke
eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what
he called "commercial aptitude."

"No, dear," said my mother, "Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you
like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your father
and I want to see what you will do with it."

The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to people
in distress. For this I hated them with the