e of the replies appeared to interest him. But he
expressed no desire to number Jasper among his acquaintances in town,
and of his own professional or private concerns he said not a word.

'Whether he could be any use to me or not, I don't exactly know,' Jasper
remarked to his mother and sisters at dinner. 'I suspect it's as much as
he can do to keep a footing among the younger tradesmen. But I think he
might have said he was willing to help me if he could.'

'Perhaps,' replied Maud, 'your large way of talking made him think any
such offer superfluous.'

'You have still to learn,' said Jasper, 'that modesty helps a man in no
department of modern life. People take you at your own valuation. It's
the men who declare boldly that they need no help to whom practical
help comes from all sides. As likely as not Yule will mention my name
to someone. "A young fellow who seems to see his way pretty clear before
him." The other man will repeat it to somebody else, "A young fellow
whose way is clear before him," and so I come to the ears of a man who
thinks "Just the fellow I want; I must look him up and ask him if he'll
do such-and-such a thing." But I should like to see these Yules at home;
I must fish for an invitation.'

In the afternoon, Miss Harrow and Marian came at the expected hour.
Jasper purposely kept out of the way until he was summoned to the
tea-table.

The Milvain girls were so far from effusive, even towards old
acquaintances, that even the people who knew them best spoke of them
as rather cold and perhaps a trifle condescending; there were people
in Wattleborough who declared their airs of superiority ridiculous and
insufferable. The truth was that nature had endowed them with a larger
share of brains than was common in their circle, and had added that
touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the restrictions of
poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the painful reserve which
characterises a certain clearly defined class in the present day. Had
they been born twenty years earlier, the children of that veterinary
surgeon would have grown up to a very different, and in all probability
a much happier, existence, for their education would have been
limited to the strictly needful, and--certainly in the case of the
girls--nothing would have encouraged them to look beyond the simple life
possible to a poor man's offspring. But whilst Maud and Dora were still
with their homely schoolmistress, Wattleborough