ere is her
music master----"

"Oh I dare say," rejoined the lady scoffingly, "and the mantle maker,
and the milliner, and the glover, and the hairdresser. That's your
affair, not mine. Name a round sum and I'll try to meet you. What d'ye
say?"

"Would five guineas----?"

"What!" shrieked Lavinia's mother. "And you call yourself a gentleman?"

"The sum I admit is a small one, but as you seemed anxious to get your
daughter off your hands I thought I was doing you a service by putting
the girl in a way to earn a good living."

"I dare say. I'm not to be taken in like that. Fine words butter no
parsnips. While Lavinia's in the house I'll go bail I'll make her work.
If she goes away I've got to pay someone in her place, haven't I? Twenty
guineas is the very lowest I'll take, and if you was anything like the
gentleman you look you'd make it double."

The haggling over such a matter and the coarse mercenary nature of the
woman jarred upon the poet's sensitive soul. The plain fact that he
hadn't got twenty guineas in the world could not be gainsaid. But he had
rich friends. If he could only interest them in this protegee of his
something might be done. And there were the "Fables."

"Twenty guineas," he repeated. "Well, I'll do my best. In two days'
time, Mrs. Fenton, I will come and see you and most likely all will be
settled to your satisfaction."

"Two days. Aye. No longer or maybe my price'll go up."

"I shall not fail. Now, Mrs. Fenton, before I go I'd like to see Lavinia
once more."

"No, this business is between you an' me, mister. The hussy's naught to
do with it. She'll have to behave herself while she's with me. That's
all I have to say about _her_."

So Gay rose and walked out of the box feeling as though he'd been
through a severe drubbing. He might have been sufficiently disheartened
to shatter his castle in the air had he not seen Lavinia's big sorrowful
eyes fixed upon him from the kitchen. He dared not disobey her mother's
behest not to speak to her so he tried to smile encouragingly, and to
intimate by his expression that all was going well. Whether he succeeded
in so doing he was by no means sure.

On leaving the coffee house Gay walked towards Charing Cross and thence
along the Haymarket to Piccadilly. His destination was Queensberry House
to the north of Burlington Gardens. Here lived Gay's good friends the
Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and indeed Gay himself, save when he
was at Twickenham