money in, I suspect, Ju, we might risk
ours."

"I wish you would tell me what you are talking about; for all this is a
perfect riddle to me."

"It 's about vesting your two thousand pounds, Julia, which now return
about seventy pounds a year, in the coal speculation. That's what I
am thinking of. Harding says, that taking a very low estimate of the
success, there ought to be a profit on the shares of fifteen per cent.
In fact, he said he wouldn't go into it himself for less."

"Why, George, why did he say this? Is there anything wrong or immoral
about coal?"

"Try and be serious for one moment, Ju," said he, with a slight touch
of irritation in his voice. "What Harding evidently meant was, that a
speculative enterprise was not to be deemed good if it yielded less.
These shrewd men, I believe, never lay out their money without large
profit."

"And, my dear George, why come and consult me about these things?
Can you imagine more hopeless ignorance than mine must be on all such
questions?"

"You can understand that a sum of money yielding three hundred a year
is more profitably employed than when it only returned seventy."

"Yes; I think my intelligence can rise to that height."

"And you can estimate, also, what increase of comfort we should have
if our present income were to be more than doubled--which it would be in
this way."

"I'd deem it positive affluence, George."

"That's all I want you to comprehend. The next question is to get
Vickars to consent; he is the surviving trustee, and you'll have to
write to him, Ju. It will come better from you than me, and say--what
you can say with a safe conscience--that we are miserably poor, and
that, though we pinch and save in every way we can, there's no reaching
the end of the year without a deficit in the budget."

"I used that unlucky phrase once before, George, and he replied, 'Why
don't you cut down the estimates?'"

"I know he did. The old curmudgeon meant I should sell Nora, and he
has a son, a gentleman commoner at Cambridge, that spends more in
wine-parties than our whole income."

"But it 's his own, George. It is not our money he is wasting."

"Of course it is not; but does that exempt him from all comment? Not
that it matters to us, however," added he, in a lighter tone. "Sit down,
and try what you can do with the old fellow. You used to be a great pet
of his once on a time."

"Yes, he went so far as to say that if I had even twenty thousand