n-holes,
pairs of ill-knit shapeless socks, and sent him many notes. She seemed
to appropriate him as a matter of course, and once when they parted at
the gate, had held up her face to be kissed--but this undesired favour
he affected not to see. He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied
him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with
alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against
the slap-dash untidy _menage_, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the
shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the
Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky
parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative
gesture, beckoned him into her room.

"Shut the door, Douglas!" she commanded in her usual frigid manner, "I
have something to tell you. Come over here and sit down."

"Yes, mother, all right," but nevertheless he remained standing; "what
is it?"

She cleared her throat and replied in her sharp metallic voice, "Mr.
Levison and I have at last made up our minds to be married; you see, we
have no one to consider but ourselves." This announcement was followed
by a blank and paralysed silence.

"He is absolutely devoted to me," resumed Mrs. Shafto, "and is a
wealthy man and, as you know, _I_ was never accustomed to poverty. The
wedding will take place in six weeks. Well, why do you stand glowering
there?" she demanded impatiently. "What have you got to say?"

"I have got to say," replied Douglas, then his voice broke a little,
"that I don't see how you can do it, or put that fat Jew tradesman into
my father's place!"

"Your father!" she screamed passionately, and a scar on her chin showed
white against a suffused complexion; "don't talk to me of your father.
Before we were married, he often came to my uncle's shop, and talked to
me about books--I got up Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, bits of Browning,
and Lamb's Essays, and Omar Khayyam. I had to study them in my own
room at night, so as to make him think I was well educated and shared
his tastes; but I did not; no," she cried, with a stamp of her foot, "I
_hated_ his tastes! Aristotle and Plato, yes, and Shakespeare--dull to
the last degree, but I liked him: he was so handsome, so thoughtful,
such a gentleman. And I believed that as he was madly in love I could
easily twist him round to my way of thinking--but I was mistaken!" She
paused, momentarily out of breath, th