There, again, was the stool, and there was he. And thus he would doubtless have plodded or drifted on till there was he and there was the grave had not an event happened that rendered him independent I of the smallest trouble. Gerald Westwood, the nabob, died, after shaking the Pagoda tree to such good purpose as to leave George and Jack a little fortune of £6,coo apiece. Nothing was left to Charley.

The Fellow of St. Kenelm's made no change in his academic career. But the merchant's clerk remained the merchant's clerk no more. He slipped off his high stool, and led the life that his soul loved he did nothing at all. That is perhaps a slight exaggeration, if taken with literal exactness. He lounged about Clifton, was a hero of tea-parties, and became known in one or two billiard rooms as a pretty fair player, whenever he took the trouble to try to win. He dressed well, behaved like a gentleman, was rather liked by the men he knew, and did well enough to flirt with mildly when no more exciting game was at hand. When all this palled even upon him, he, for occupation and in order to clear himself from his ledger stains, obtained a commission in the County Militia.

A little later, however, this inoffensive and easy-going young officer began to find his billiard losses and his tailor's gains accumulating a little uncomfortably. But it is better to be born lucky than rich; and Jack Westwood, simply by dint of doing nothing at all, became a richer man than the clever George and the energetic Gerald rolled into one. A Lady Pender, widow of the late Sir Samuel Pender, drysalter, alderman, thrice mayor and knight bachelor, took it into her head to give her hand, her five years of seniority, her three little girls, and her twelve hundred a year in the funds to the handsome, easy-tempered, and gentlemanly Captain, who had the good birth and excellent family connections that she lacked and loved, and who seemed made for the rôle of a model husband. He married her and her twelve hundred a year just as he had mounted Mr. Corbet's high stoolthere was she and there was he.

At least half a dozen fortune-hunters left the town, who had pressed their claims while Captain Westwood kept his mouth shut and only opened it to let the prize drop in. But Lady Pender was old enough to know the world, and, wisely, did not care to surrender the reins of her twelve hundred a year.

In a word, Jack Westwood was a lucky fellow. He no longer flirted, indeed, even in the mildest way; but he still played his rubber of whist in the evening, and his game of billiards in the afternoon, and he had more than enough for his tailor's bills and his other simple

pieasures. He did not, indeed, see much of the twelve hundred a year; but it paid for the housekeeping in their crescent, and his own two hundred served for pocket money. He resumed his bottom fishing. His spare time-for even the most skilful of loungers has an occasional spare hour-he spent in petting and spoiling his three little step-children, for he was a thoroughly good-natured man.

If ever there was a house without a single bone from which even a Cuvier could erect a skeleton in any of its cupboards, it was surely the establishment of the Westwood family. Madame was an admirable economist-a little too admirable, said some people-and the Captain had a good appetite and a good digestion. He began to grow more careless in his dress, and had even dreamed of a slight pain in the joint of one of his smallest toes.

But one foggy December day, after about seven monotonous years had dropped, minute by minute, into an inexhaustible reservoir of laborious nothingness, the Captain came home a full half hour after the six o'clock dinner time-the most startling event that had befallen Mrs. Westwood since her first wedding-day. Her little pinched face was cross and the dinner was cold. She generally, like a good housekeeper, provided her husband at meal time with what watchful experience had taught her was just enough to satisfy his first appetite; but on this occasion, for once, there was enough and to spare. ate but one of the three cutlets, and even then did not scrape the bone. Moreover his open face wore a cloud, and he was unusually silent even for a man usually so sparing of his conversation as he. But he drank a full half bottle of sherry in the course of half an hour.

He

It was a solemn meal. Three yards of white tablecloth stretched between the pair; a butler in black stood by the barren side-board, and a boy in buttons handed the cutlets and potatoes from one to the other as if he were waiting on a score. A few coals smouldered in the grate of polished steel; the evening was cold, but the fire was colder still. Mrs. Westwood wore a shawl. The Captain loved a shooting jacket and slippers, but she expected him always to dress for dinner, and his continually increasing waist-the only waste that increased in that house-made the daily performance a matter of physical discomfort as well as of mental worry. Nor did the late alderman's widow, though she had been a mayor's wife, make a comfortable hostess. Hostess, be it said advisedly; for under her régime her husband could not forget whose money it was that paid for the page's buttons and for the butler's black clothes. She looked more than the five years his senior, for she was one of those people who, being both fair and angular, wear the worst of all.

The Captain ate little and talked less; and yet he was as long over this solemn meal as if he had been blessed with the appetite of the late Alderman Pender, to borrow a hackneyed and obsolete sarBut he drew a long sigh of relief when it was over, and when the three flaxen-haired Misses Pender entered in Indian file in order of age, white-frocked, blue-sashed, and well combed.

casm.

He looked deprecatingly at his wife, and then shyly at the butler. "Decant one of those pints of the last port, Evans," he said. "Caroline, my dear, I'm sure it'll do you good to have a glass of wine."

"Not a drop for me. And I'm sure you can't want any more wine." The words were simple enough, but the tone meant more than the words.

"Never mind, then, Evans." sherry and squeezed it dreamily.

He took the empty decanter of
Then he woke up again.

"Come and sit by me, Molly," he said to the youngest Miss Pender. "Take an orange, and I'll show you how to peel it."

He was as long and careful over the process as if a wager depended on his leaving no atom of outer or inner rind.

Mrs. Westwood was cold, but her curiosity was beginning to boil. "There, John," she said acidly, "don't give the child any moreyou'll make her ill-and the doctor just paid. They're as sour as can be, and there'll be none left for to-morrow.

remember the child isn't Molly, but Marian.” The Captain made a grand effort.

There, girls-you hear what mamma says.

like good girls and eat them in the school-room.

And I wish you'd

Take your oranges
There-run away.

I say, my dear, it's very cold. I'm sure you'd like a glass of wine." "I'm quite warm. It's your own fault if the things were cold."

"A-hem "

"Were you going to say anything, John?"

"Well-no. That is, I was going to say something, only I couldn't before Evans and the children, don't you know."

"They're gone now."

"I wish, Caroline, my dear, you'd have some wine."

"How often am I to say I don't want any wine? You drank six glasses at dinner-I counted them, so I know."

"Shall I ring for some coals?"

"You seem to forget, John, we had in those coals before the winter-and where's the good, I should like to know, if we're to get through them just when they're going to rise again ?"

"Well, then, my dear," he began desperately, "you must know I

had a letter this morning. I met the postman as I went out to the bil-to walk on the downs. So I had a letter-where is it?" He searched all his pockets, even to those in his waistcoat, but in vain. "Oh, I suppose I left it in my jacket upstairs. I should like you to read that letter, my dear-'twas very sad-very sad indeed. Nomy dear not death nor bad news, at least not exactly, don't you know, but "

"Well, John ?"”

"I should like you to see that letter, my dear-and so you shall, when we go upstairs. You've heard me speak of my poor brother Charley? Well, he's dead and gone, poor old boy."

Mrs. Westwood drew a sigh of relief in her turn. According to her experience, family scapegraces have an unpleasant habit of never dying, and of always turning up again. She looked a little less acid as she answered,

I needn't get

"Then I suppose you'll have to get a hat-band. any mourning of course, as he's but a stranger to me, and not one to be proud of you know that yourself, John-no more need the girls-he's no relation of theirs, hardly a connection."

"But you see, my dear-I wish I'd got that letter."

Mrs. Westwood liked reading letters. "I should think you might send Evans, John, if you're too indolent to go upstairs. I'm sure Evans is eating his head off, and Montague too."

"That's true, my dear." He rang the bell. "Evans, feel in the pocket of my shooting jacket, and bring me down a letter with a-a-a New York envelope. Charley died in New York, my dear."

"Well, John, it's all the better, it's so far away. You needn't even get a hat-band, if people don't know. Wasn't he a common soldier, or something dreadful ?"

"He did enlist, poor Charley. Ran away from home--but he left the army, my dear. And so you see "There hare no letter, sir," said Evans.

yet about the room."

"Not in the jacket nor

"Never mind, Evans; I suppose I dropped it somewhereperhaps in the bil-on the downs. It's no matter, my dear; it'll do when it turns up just as well as now. So, you see, Charley's dead." "And that's all?"

"Well, my dear, not quite all. He's married."

"Ah!" Mrs. Westwood hitched up her shawl, and made a wholly indescribable movement with her upper lip and the tip of her nose, of which the sharpness was eloquent. Some low creature, of

66

course. There ought to be a law against those sort of men marrying and intruding their low connections on to respectable people. Well, there's one comfort-we can't be expected to know anything of her. You don't mean she has been impudent enough to write to you—a perfect stranger ?"

"No, my dear. Not exactly she. It was Mr. Mr.-Mr.-what the devil was the "

"John! You forget yourself."

"I beg your pardon, my dear. What the deuce, I meant to say. Mr. Smith; that's it. He wrote to me. I have no head for

names."

"And who's Mr. Smith ?"

"Mr. Smith, my dear? Oh, an agent, or something, don't you know. I've inquired; Mr. Smith of America; a most respectable man. Poor Charley married his niece or something-it's all in the letter. Quite a good match."

"Ah! You mean your brother Charles Westwood died well off, then? Did he make a will? Let me see-if he didn't, your brother at Oxford comes before you?"

"Poor Charley!" went on the Captain. "He was a rolling stone, don't you know, and never gathered moss like poor Gerald or George. He married-it's all in that letter "-he rummaged his pockets again. "But you see Charley, poor fellow, hadn't the luck of some of us, my dear, and so he died, and she died, and he left "

"What? If it was only a hundred or two it would be something. What did he leave? A will?"

"I wish, John, you'd come to the point. It's quite distressing. What did he leave her?"

"Nothing, my dear. Poor little thing!"

"Poor little thing, indeed! People shouldn't marry with nothing. And we know how the sins of the fathers ought to be visited on the children when they do. Well, it's nothing to you. I suppose you'll write back at once to that Mr. Smith and say so."

"My dear! Poor Charley's only child, you know!"

"And suppose it is—what then? I'm sure I'm not its aunt-you're hardly even its uncle."

"But, my dear-left to the charity of strangers! Just think if Molly or little Gerald "-

"John! You are forgetting yourself. Marian will never be left

VOL. XII., N.S. 1874.

D