o'clock meal any Sunday evening I like. Your aunt
expects me." The forefinger became emphatic. "You simply arrange for
him to meet me, say, outside the Met. at ten minutes to the hower; I
shall be carrying a _Lloyd's_ in my right hand. I brings him along,"
continued Mr. Trew exultantly; "I introduces him as a young personal
friend of mine that I met on the steamer going to Clacton, year before
last. Your aunt says at once that any friend of mine is a friend of
her'n. You and him pretend not to know each other, but you gradually
become acquainted, and your aunt asks him, at the finish, to look in
again. Does that sound all right, or can you suggest a better plan?"

"It's splendid," she cried.

"I think," he continued, "I shall mention in the course of the evening
that his father was the best friend I ever had in the world. When I
was in a slight financial difficulty once, his father--your young man's
father, I mean--came to my assistance. And him not well off neither.
Turning-point of my life. But for that help I should, likely enough,
have gone down, and down, and down." He looked at her for approval.
"What's wrong with that?"

"He's a gentleman!"

Mr. Trew gazed for a few moments at a baby in a perambulator.

"I was born in 'fifty-five, the year of the Crimea War," he said
deliberately, "and if my mother had had her way, I sh'd have been
christened Sebastopol, which wouldn't have been any catch to a public
man like myself. If I'm spared till next year, I shall be celebrating
my jubilee, and all London will be illuminated, I expect, with military
troops lining the streets. But what I want to tell you, missy, is
that, all that time, I've never seen any good resulting from a girl in
your position of life becoming friendly with any chap who was
considerably above her in regard to what we call social status. On the
other hand, I've seen harm come from it."

"There's going to be none in my case," she said quickly.

"I know, I know! I'm perfectly sure of that. That is to say, I'm
absolutely certain that is your view now. I can't quite explain what
I mean to any one of your age and your sex. If I was a well-educated
man"--here he took off his cap and rubbed the top of his head
with the peak--"I could find words to wrop it up somehow. The
long and the short of it is, you relinquish the idea. To oblige
me"--persuasively--"and to gratify your aunt, who's been pretty good to
you since you were a child--