he Countess and Lady Anna just beneath
you, in the same house."

"It was a quiet house for them to come to;--and cheap."

"Quiet enough, and as cheap as any, I dare say;--but I don't know
whether it is well that you should be thrown so much with them. They
are different from us." The son looked at his father, but made no
immediate reply. "Our lot has been cast with theirs because of their
difficulties," continued the old man, "but the time is coming when we
had better stand aloof."

"What do you mean, father?"

"I mean that we are tailors, and these people are born nobles."

"They have taken our help, father."

"Well; yes, they have. But it is not for us to say anything of that.
It has been given with a heart."

"Certainly with a heart."

"And shall be given to the end. But the end of it will come soon now.
One will be a Countess and the other will be the Lady Anna. Are they
fit associates for such as you and me?"

"If you ask me, father, I think they are."

"They don't think so. You may be sure of that."

"Have they said so, father?"

"The Countess has said so. She has complained that you call her
daughter simply Anna. In future you must give her a handle to
her name." Daniel Thwaite was a dark brown man, with no tinge of
ruddiness about him, a thin spare man, almost swarthy, whose hands
were as brown as a nut, and whose cheeks and forehead were brown. But
now he blushed up to his eyes. The hue of the blood as it rushed to
his face forced itself through the darkness of his visage, and he
blushed, as such men do blush,--with a look of indignation on his
face. "Just call her Lady Anna," said the father.

"The Countess has been complaining of me then?"

"She has hinted that her daughter will be injured by your
familiarity, and she is right. I suppose that the Lady Anna Lovel
ought to be treated with deference by a tailor,--even though the
tailor may have spent his last farthing in her service."

"Do not let us talk about the money, father."

"Well; no. I'd as lief not think about the money either. The world is
not ripe yet, Daniel."

"No;--the world is not ripe."

"There must be earls and countesses."

"I see no must in it. There are earls and countesses as there used to
be mastodons and other senseless, over-grown brutes roaming miserable
and hungry through the undrained woods,--cold, comfortless, unwieldy
things, which have perished in the general progress. The big things
have all to give way t