pass unchallenged.

"_I_ never pawned a clock," he said, stroking his little grey head.

"That's a lot to boast of, isn't it?" demanded his niece; "if I hadn't
got anything better than that to boast of I wouldn't boast at all."

Mr. Piper said that he was not boasting.

"It'll go on like this, my dear, till you're ruined," said the
sympathetic Mrs. Berry, turning to her friend again; "what'll you do
then?"

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Cox. "I've had a bad season, too, and I'm
so anxious about him in spite of it all. I can't sleep at nights for
fearing that he's in some trouble. I'm sure I laid awake half last night
crying."

Mrs. Berry sniffed loudly, and Mr. Piper making a remark in a low voice,
turned on him with ferocity.

"What did you say?" she demanded.

"I said it does her credit," said Mr. Piper, firmly.

"I might have known it was nonsense," retorted his niece, hotly. "Can't
you get him to take the pledge, Mary?"

"I couldn't insult him like that," said Mrs. Cox, with a shiver; "you
don't know his pride. He never admits that he drinks; he says that he
only takes a little for his indigestion. He'd never forgive me. When he
pawns the things he pretends that somebody has stolen them, and the way
he goes on at me for my carelessness is alarming. He gets worked up to
such a pitch that sometimes I almost think he believes it himself."

"Rubbish," said Mrs. Berry, tartly, "you're too easy with him."

Mrs. Cox sighed, and, leaving the room, returned with a bottle of wine
which was port to the look and red-currant to the taste, and a seedcake
of formidable appearance. The visitors attacked these refreshments
mildly, Mr. Piper sipping his wine with an obtrusive carefulness
which his niece rightly regarded as a reflection upon her friend's
hospitality.

"What Cox wants is a shock," she said; "you've dropped some crumbs on
the carpet, uncle."

Mr. Piper apologised and said he had got his eye on them, and would pick
them up when he had finished and pick up his niece's at the same time to
prevent her stooping. Mrs. Berry, in an aside to Mrs. Cox, said that
her Uncle Joseph's tongue had got itself disliked on both sides of the
family.

"And I'd give him one," said Mrs. Berry, returning again to the subject
of Mr. Cox and shocks. "He has a gentleman's life of it here, and he
would look rather silly if you were sold up and he had to do something
for his living."

"It's putting away the things that is so bad,"