d a
vocabulary of a thousand words, with all of which Mrs. Whitland was
well acquainted; he was also a man of means and possessions, he
explained to her. She, giving confidence for confidence, told of the
house at Cambridge, the furniture, the library, the annuity of three
hundred pounds, earmarked for his daughter's education, but mistakenly
left to his wife for that purpose, also the four thousand three hundred
pounds invested in War Stock, which was wholly her own.

Mr. Cresta Morris became more agreeable than ever. In three months
they were married, in six months the old house at Cambridge had been
disposed of, the library dispersed, as much of the furniture as Mr.
Morris regarded as old-fashioned sold, and the relict of Professor
Whitland was installed in a house in Brockley.

It was a nice house--in many ways nicer than the rambling old building
in Cambridge, from Mrs. Morris's point of view. And she was happy in a
tolerable, comfortable kind of fashion, and though she was wholly
ignorant as to the method by which her husband made his livelihood, she
managed to get along very well without enlightenment.

Marguerite was brought back from Cheltenham to grace the new
establishment and assist in its management. She shared none of her
mother's illusions as to the character of Mr. Cresta Morris, as that
gentleman explained to a very select audience one January night.

Mr. Morris and his two guests sat before a roaring fire in the
dining-room, drinking hot brandies-and-waters. Mrs. Morris had gone to
bed; Marguerite was washing up, for Mrs. Morris had the "servant's
mind," which means that she could never keep a servant.

The sound of crashing plates had come to the dining-room and
interrupted Mr. Morris at a most important point of his narrative. He
jerked his head round.

"That's the girl," he said; "she's going to be a handful."

"Get her married," said Job Martin wisely.

He was a hatchet-faced man with a reputation for common-sense. He had
another reputation which need not be particularized at the moment.

"Married?" scoffed Mr. Morris. "Not likely!"

He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully for a moment, then:

"She wouldn't come in to dinner--did you notice that? We are not good
enough for her. She's fly! Fly ain't the word for it. We always find
her nosing and sneaking around."

"Send her back to school," said the third guest.

He was a man of fifty-five, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, who