ell, to go with the watch. Lily refused at
first, for form's sake, and then took courage--like a poor little martyr
who did not like to disoblige her Pa--and chose a very pretty watch-chain,
to the great wonderment of the Three Graces and of Nunkie, who thought, as
they left the shop, that the children of to-day ... upon his word ... the
parents of to-day ... it was all very different in his time....

Clifton laughed to himself at that old curmudgeon as he left him to go
home, with his star. Lily hung heavily on her father's arm, passed the
draper's shops with a serious air.

"No, another time!" said Pa, who felt what she was after.

And he hurried his daughter off, for he might have yielded, she was so
nice.

Lily set her watch in Piccadilly, as they passed; then at the Cafe de
l'Europe, by the big clock at the back; and again, twenty steps farther,
at the bar of the Crown. Lily looked at the time and Pa showed his Lily
off. He was proud to be seen with her in the neighborhood of Lisle Street,
where everybody knew him. True, he seemed to have the name of being hard
with Lily. But, come, was he hard? Did she look like a martyr? It was
preposterous, all those stories. And he redoubled his attentions to his
daughter, who talked a heap of nonsense, asked funny questions:

"Why should writing a letter interfere with the trapeze, when a girl has
arms harder than a horse's hocks?"

"What? What?" asked Pa, taken aback, and when he understood, he would have
held his sides for laughing, if he had been at home:

"Oh, the old rogue!" he said admiringly. "He loves his dear girls, does
Nunkie!"

He was still laughing when they reached Tottenham Court Road; and, as they
passed the Horse Shoe, a voice, which Lily seemed to remember, called to
them from behind:

"Hullo, Clifton!"

Pa turned his head in surprise:

"Hullo, Trampy!"

For he recognized him at once, though he was much changed. Besides, he
knew him to be in London. But it was a prosperous and gorgeous Trampy,
quite unlike the old days; and forthwith Trampy explained: a champagne
supper last night, just come from the bar; glass of Vichy water, you know.
Huge success in London. Girls, by Jove! And then, pretending not to know
Lily:

"I congratulate you, Clifton; what a dear little wife!"

Pa, greatly amused, protested: not his wife, no, his Lily! Then Trampy
went into ecstasies: how pretty she had grown, one of the handsomest girls
in London, sure! And in the