ed indignantly, "and I suppose my friends are
their friends." So there had been a little soreness which made the
lady's submission the more disagreeable to her.

"Butler Cornbury! He's a puppy. I don't want to see him, and what's
more, I won't vote for him."

"You need not tell her so, my dear; and he's not coming. I suppose
you like your girls to hold their heads up in the place; and if they
show that they've respectable people with them at home, respectable
people will be glad to notice them."

"Respectable! If our girls are to be made respectable by giving grand
dances, I'd rather not have them respectable. How much is the whole
thing to cost?"

"Well, very little, T.; not much more than one of your Christmas
dinner-parties. There'll be just the music, and the lights, and a
bit of something to eat. What people drink at such times comes to
nothing,--just a little negus and lemonade. We might possibly have a
bottle or two of champagne at the supper-table, for the look of the
thing."

"Champagne!" exclaimed the brewer. He had never yet incurred the cost
of a bottle of champagne within his own house, though he thought
nothing of it at public dinners. The idea was too much for him; and
Mrs. Tappitt, feeling how the ground lay, gave that up,--at any rate
for the present. She gave up the champagne; but in abandoning that,
she obtained the marital sanction, a quasi sanction which he was too
honourable as a husband afterwards to repudiate, for the music and
the eatables. Mrs. Tappitt knew that she had done well, and prepared
for his dinner that day a beef-steak pie, made with her own hands.
Tappitt was not altogether a dull man, and understood these little
signs. "Ah," said he, "I wonder how much that pie is to cost me?"

"Oh, T., how can you say such things! As if you didn't have
beef-steak pie as often as it's good for you." The pie, however, had
its effect, as also did the exceeding "boilishness" of the water
which was brought in for his gin-toddy that night; and it was known
throughout the establishment that papa was in a good humour, and that
mamma had been very clever.

"The girls must have had new dresses anyway before the month was
out," Mrs. Tappitt said to her husband the next morning before he had
left the conjugal chamber.

"Do you mean to say that they're to have gowns made on purpose for
this party?" said the brewer; and it seemed by the tone of his voice
that the hot gin and water had lost its kindly