s popular at the time; but catch him putting his coin in anything
doubtful."

That is what people said; and as he had a good home at Kensington, and
gave nice, quiet little dinners, he and his were pretty well courted.

"Well, yes, I don't mind, Archy," said old Graves, the wholesale cork
merchant of Tower Hill. "Hazel Thorne is a very nice girl--very pretty
and ladylike, so I suppose we must swallow the mother for her sake."

The boa-constrictor-like proposition was naturally enough taken
by Archibald Graves in its slango-metaphorical sense, and
slango-metaphorically Mrs Frederick Thorne was swallowed by the whole
of the Graves family, and she did not agree with them.

For Mrs Thorne was not a pleasant woman. Tall, handsome, and
thoroughly ladylike in appearance, she was very proud of having been
considered a beauty, and was not above reminding her husband of the fact
that she might have married So-and-so and What's-his-name, and
You-know-whom, all of which gentlemen could have placed her in a better
position than that she occupied; and as she grew older these references
were more frequent. Each child she had seemed to be looked upon by her
as a fresh grievance--a new cause for tears, and tears she accordingly
shed to an extent that might have made any one fancy this was the reason
why the Thorne home generally seemed damp and chilly, till Hazel entered
the room like so much sunshine, when the chill immediately passed away.

Gradually growing weaker in act and speech, the unfortunate woman
received a shock which completed the change that had been gradually
heretofore advancing, for Fred Thorne--handsome, bright, cheery, and
ever ready to laugh at mamma's doldrums, as he called them--went out as
usual one morning to the City, saying that he should be back a little
earlier to dinner that day, as he had stalls for the opera.

"I'll come back through Covent Garden, Hazel, and bring you a bouquet,"
he cried merrily.

"You need not bring flowers for me, Frederick," said Mrs Thorne, in an
aggrieved tone. "I am growing too old for flowers now."

"Too old? Ha, ha, ha!" he cried. "Why, you look younger than ever.
Smithson asked me the other day if you and Hazel were my daughters."

"Did he, Frederick," said Mrs Thorne, in a rather less lachrymose tone.

"To be sure he did; and of course I am going to bring you a bouquet as
well."

He bought the two bouquets, and they were kept fresh in water, taken to
pieces, a