I think, you know, that you ought to tell your father," Mr.
Cashmore said.

"Tell him I've borrowed of you?"

Mr. Cashmore good-humouredly demurred. "It would serve me right--it's
so wretched my having listened to you. Tell him, certainly," he went on
after an instant. "But what I mean is that if you're in such straits you
should speak to him like a man."

Harold smiled at the innocence of a friend who could suppose him not to
have exhausted that resource. "I'm ALWAYS speaking to him like a man,
and that's just what puts him so awfully out. He denies to my face that
I AM one. One would suppose, to hear him, not only that I'm a small
objectionable child, but that I'm scarcely even human. He doesn't
conceive me as with human wants."

"Oh," Mr. Cashmore laughed, "you've all--you youngsters--as many wants,
I know, as an advertisement page of the Times."

Harold showed an admiration. "That's awfully good. If you think you
ought to speak of it," he continued, "do it rather to mamma." He noted
the hour. "I'll go, if you'll excuse me, to give you the chance."

The visitor referred to his own watch. "It's your mother herself who
gives the chances--the chances YOU take."

Harold looked kind and simple. "She HAS come in, I know. She'll be with
you in a moment."

He was halfway to the door, but Mr. Cashmore, though so easy, had not
done with him. "I suppose you mean that if it's only your mother who's
told, you may depend on her to shield you."

Harold turned this over as if it were a questionable sovereign, but on
second thoughts he wonderfully smiled. "Do you think that after you've
let me have it you can tell? You could, of course, if you hadn't." He
appeared to work it out for Mr. Cashmore's benefit. "But I don't mind,"
he added, "your telling mamma."

"Don't mind, you mean really, its annoying her so awfully?"

The invitation to repent thrown off in this could only strike the young
man as absurd--it was so previous to any enjoyment. Harold liked things
in their proper order; but at the same time his evolutions were quick.
"I dare say I AM selfish, but what I was thinking was that the terrific
wigging, don't you know?--well, I'd take it from HER. She knows about
one's life--about our having to go on, by no fault of our own, as
our parents start us. She knows all about wants--no one has more than
mamma."

Mr. Cashmore soundlessly glared his amusement. "So she'll say it's all
right?"

"Oh no; she'll let me have i