e mention of his own age.

"You must have seen it often, living so close."

"I never lived close myself; I am a Londoner."

"It's all the same--your people do. The Pennycuicks and the Careys have
been neighbours for generations."

"I am only distantly related to that family."

"A Carey is a Carey," persisted the old man, who had determined to have
it so from the first, and he would listen to no disclaimers.

He had already referred darkly to that Mary Carey of the hooked nose
and pointed chin. His eldest daughter, he said, had been named after
her. This eldest daughter, with her too-ruddy face, had shyly drawn
near, and taken a chair at her father's elbow, where she sat very
quietly, busily tatting. Plain though her face was, she had beautiful
hands. Her play with thread and shuttle, just under Guthrie's eyes,
held them watchful for a time--the time during which no sign of
Deborah's white gown was to be perceived upon the landscape.

"My brother and I, we never hit it off, somehow. So when my father died
I cleared. You don't remember his funeral, I suppose? No, no--that was
before your time. They hung the church all over with black broadcloth
of the best. That was the way in those days, and the cloth was the
parson's perquisite. The funeral hangings used to keep him in coats and
trousers. And they used to deal out long silk hat-scarves to all the
mourners--silk that would stand alone, as they say--and the wives made
mantles and aprons of them. They went down from mother to daughter,
like the best china and family spoons. That's how women took care of
their clothes when I was young. They didn't want new frocks and fallals
every week, like some folks I could name." And he pinched his
daughter's ear.

"Talk to Deb, father," said Mary. "I have not had a new frock for a
great many weeks."

"Aye, Deb's the one! That girl's got to marry a millionaire, or I don't
know where she'll be."

Almost Mrs Urquhart's words! And, like hers, they pricked sharply into
the feelings of our young man. His eyes went a-roaming once more, to
discover the white gown afar off, trailing unheeded along a dusty
garden path. The old man saw it too, and his genial countenance clouded
over.

"Well," he continued, after a thoughtful pause, "poor old Billy Dalzell
and I, we emigrated together. He had a devil of a stepfather, and no
home to speak of. We were mates at school, and we made up our minds to
start out for ourselves. You remember th