out making any fuss?"

"Because he says he must make the acquaintance of the man--the man, he
says--with whom he has been in correspondence so long. This is what he
says."

She opened a letter which lay upon a table covered with papers, but
her grandfather stopped her.

"Well, my dear, I do not want to know what he says. He wishes to make
your acquaintance. Very good, then. You are going to see him, and to
tell him who you are. That is enough. But as for deceiving"--he
paused, trying to understand this extreme scrupulosity of
conscience--"if you come to deceiving--well, in a kind sort of a way
you did allow him to think his correspondent a man. I admit that. What
harm is done to him? None. He won't be so mean, I suppose, as to ask
for his money back again."

"I think he ought to have it all back," said Iris; "yes, all from the
very beginning. I am ashamed that I ever took any money from him. My
face burns when I think of it."

To this her grandfather made no reply. The returning of money paid for
services rendered was, to his commercial mind, too foolish a thing to
be even talked about. At the same time, Iris was quite free to manage
her own affairs. And then there was that roll of papers in the safe.
Why, what matter if she sent away all her pupils? He changed the
subject.

"Iris, my dear," he said, "about this other world, where the people
amuse themselves; the world which lives in the squares and in the big
houses on the Chelsea Embankment here, you know--how should you like,
just for a change, to belong to that world and have no work to do?"

"I don't know," she replied carelessly, because the question did not
interest her.

"You would have to leave me, of course. You would sever your
connection, as they say, with the shop."

"Please, don't let us talk nonsense, grandfather."

"You would have to be ashamed, perhaps, of ever having taught for your
living."

"Now that I never should be--never, not if they made me a duchess."

"You would go dressed in silk and velvet. My dear, I should like to
see you dressed up just for once, as we have seen them at the
theater."

"Well, I should like one velvet dress in my life. Only one. And it
should be crimson--a beautiful, deep, dark crimson."

"Very good. And you would drive in a carriage instead of an omnibus;
you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would
give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many
second hand book