to a watch, my time's nothing to me!"

"No, I dare say not," Julia said, but she tied the parcel firmly, then
she gave it to him. "Take it away," she said, "and don't try to sell a
thing."

She opened the door as she spoke, and he, accepting it as a hint of
dismissal, meekly followed her from the room. When they had reached
the hall above he ventured on a last protest. "Why may I not sell
anything?" he asked.

"Because we have not quite come to that," she said, with a ring of
bitterness in her voice: "We have come pretty low, I know, with our
dodges and our shifts, but we haven't quite come to depriving you.
Johnny"--and she stretched out a hand to him, a thing which was rare,
for no one thought it necessary to shake hands with Mr. Gillat--"it's
very good of you to offer; I'm grateful to you; I'm awfully glad you
did it; you made me ashamed."

Johnny looked at her perplexed; the note of bitterness in her voice
had deepened to something more he was altogether at a loss to
understand. But she gave him no opportunity for inquiry, for she
opened the street door.

"Good-bye," she said, her usual self again, "and don't you let me
catch you selling those things."

"Oh, I say! But how will you manage?" he protested.

"Somehow; I have got several ideas already; I'm better at this sort of
game than you are, you know."

And she shut the door upon him; then she went back to Captain
Polkington.

"Father," he said, "would you mind telling me if you have borrowed any
other money? It would be much simpler if we knew just how we stood."

The Captain seemed to have a painfully clear idea of how he stood.
"Your mother," he remarked, with apparent irrelevance, "is such an
unreasonable woman; if she were like you--if she saw things sensibly.
But she won't, she'll make a fuss; she will entirely overlook the fact
that it is my own money that I have lost."

"I am afraid she will," Julia agreed. "Will you tell me if you lost
any one else's money as well?"

"Oh, a trifle," the Captain said; "nothing to speak of yesterday; I
have borrowed a little now and again, at cards and so on; a trifling
accommodation."

"From whom?"

"Rawson-Clew."

Julia nodded; this was bad, but it might have been worse. Mr.
Rawson-Clew was not a personal friend of the Polkingtons, and he was
not a man in an inferior position who might presume upon his loan to
the Captain to establish a friendly footing. On the contrary, he was
in a superior positio