r own way. But you'll
be sorry for it."

"What a delightful person Mrs. Orton Beg is," Beth observed, to make a
diversion; "and so nice-looking too!"

"You are easily pleased! Why, she's forty if she's a day!" Dan
ejaculated, speaking as if that were to her discredit, and must
deprive her of any consideration from him.

The next excitement was a military ball. Dan determined to go, and
Beth was ready enough; she had never been to a ball.

"But how about a dress?" she said. "There has been such a sudden
change in the fashion since mine were made, I'm afraid I have nothing
that will do."

"Then get a new one," Dan said.

"What! and add to the bills?" Beth objected.

"Oh, bother the bills!" he answered in the tone he called cheery.
"I've had them coming in all my life and I'm still here. Get a thing
when you want it, and pay for it when you can--that's my motto. Why,
my tailor's bill alone is up in the hundreds.

"But that was the bill mamma gave you the money to settle," Beth
exclaimed.

"I know," he answered casually. "I got the money out of her for that,
but I had to spend it on your amusement in town, my dear."

"Oh!" Beth ejaculated--"how could you?"

"How could I?" he answered coolly. "Well, I couldn't of course if I
hadn't been clever; but I can always get anything I like out of old
ladies. They dote on me. You've only got to amuse them, you know, and
pour in a little sentiment on occasion. Let them understand you've
been rather a naughty man, but you know what's right--that always
fetches them. Your mother would have sold out all she had to help me
when she found I meant to repent and settle. But of course I wouldn't
take anything that was not absolutely necessary," he added
magnanimously.

Beth compressed her lips and frowned. "Do you mean to say you obtained
money from a poor woman like my mother for a special purpose which she
approved, and spent that money on something else?" she asked.

Dan changed countenance. "I got the money from your mother to pay my
tailor's bill; but the circumstance of your spending more money in
town than I could afford compelled me to use it for another purpose,"
he answered in rather a blustering tone.

"I spent no money in town," Beth said.

"I had to spend it on you then," he rejoined, "and a nice lament you
would have made if I hadn't! But it's all the same. Husband and wife
are one; and I maintain that the money was given to me to pay a just
debt, and I paid