no pretension save to provide a cheerful
temporary shelter for three people who liked one another. Here the
new household would take shape, and get its right note of character.
Apparently Louisa would not be urged to form part of this household. He
said to himself with frankness that he didn't want her, and there had
been nothing to indicate that her children would pine for her. She
showed good sense when she said that her place was in the shop, and
in her ancestral home over the shop. No doubt there would be a certain
awkwardness, visible to others if not to themselves, about her living in
one part of London and her children in another. But here also her good
sense would come on;--and, besides, this furnished house in town would
be a mere brief overture to the real thing--the noble country mansion
he was going to have, with gardens and horses and hounds and artificial
lakes and deer parks and everything. Quite within the year he would be
able to realize this consummation of his dreams.

How these nice young people would revel in such a place--and how they
would worship him for having given it to them for a home! His heart
warmed within him as he thought of this. He smiled affectionately at the
picture Julia made, polishing the glass with vehement circular movements
of her slight arm, and then grimacing in comic vexation at the deadly
absence of landscape outside. Was there ever a sweeter or more lovable
girl in this world? Would there have to be some older woman to manage
the house, at the beginning? he wondered. He should like it immensely if
that could be avoided. Julia looked fragile and inexperienced--but she
would be twenty-one next month. Surely that was a mature enough age for
the slight responsibility of presiding over servants who should be the
best that money could buy. Many girls were married, and given households
of their own to manage, when they were even younger.

This reflection raised an obstacle against the smooth-flowing current
of his thoughts. Supposing that Julia got the notion of marrying--how
miserable that would make everything. Very likely she would never do any
such thing; he had observed in her no shadow of a sign that a thought of
matrimony had ever crossed her brain. Yet that was a subject upon which,
of course, she could not be asked to give pledges, even to herself.

Thorpe tried to take a liberal view of this matter. He argued to himself
that there would be no objection at all to incorp