Frazer, a clergyman who wants to marry Violet."

Mr. Gillat sat upright. "Dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "No? Really?" and
when Julia had given him an outline of the circumstances, he added
softly, "A wonderful woman! I always had a great respect for your
mother." From which it is clear he thought Mrs. Polkington was to be
congratulated. "And when is it to be?" he asked.

"Violet says a year's time; they could not afford to marry sooner and
do it properly, but it will have to be sooner all the same."

"A year is not a very long time," Mr. Gillat observed; "they go fast,
years; one almost loses count of them, they go so fast."

"I dare say," Julia answered, "but Violet will have to get married
without waiting for the year to pass. We can't afford a long
engagement."

Mr. Gillat looked mildly surprised and troubled; he always did when
scarcity of money was brought home to him, but Julia regarded it quite
calmly.

"The sooner Violet is married," she said, "the sooner we can reduce
some of the expenses; we are living beyond our income now--not a great
deal, perhaps, still a bit; Violet's going would save enough, I
believe; we could catch up then. That is one reason, but the chief is
that a long engagement is expensive; you see, we should have to have
meals different, and fires different, and all manner of extras if Mr.
Frazer came in and out constantly. We should have to live altogether
in a more expensive style; we might manage it for three months, or six
if we were driven to it, but for a year--it is out of the question."

"But," Mr. Gillat protested, "if they can't afford it? You said he
could not; he is a curate."

"He must get a living, or a chaplaincy, or something; or rather, I
expect we must get it for him. Oh, no, we have no Church influence,
and we don't know any bishops; but one can always rake up influence,
and get to know people, if one is not too particular how."

Mr. Gillat looked at her uneasily; every now and then there flitted
through his mind a suspicion that Julia was clever too, as clever
perhaps as her mother, and though not, like her, a moral and social
pillar standing in the high first estate from which he and the Captain
had fallen. Julia had never been that, never aspired to it; she was no
success at all; content to come and sit in the dining-room with him
and Bouquet; she could not really be clever, or else she would have
achieved something for herself, and scorned to consort with failures.