pressure of the family creditors. With
every year, Nora had grown up into a fuller understanding of her
father's tragedy; a more bitter, a more indignant understanding. They
might worry through; one way or another she supposed they would worry
through. But her father's strength and genius were being sacrificed. And
this child of seventeen did not see how to stop it.

After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly
over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she
could not make up her mind to say. He put out an arm, as she stood
beside his chair, and drew her to him.

"Dear little Trotty Veck!" It had been his pet name for her as a child.
Nora, for answer, bent her head, and kissed him.

"Father"--she broke out--"I've got my first job!"

He looked up enquiringly.

"Mr. Hurst"--she named her English Literature tutor, a fellow of
Marmion--"has got it for me. I've been doing some Norman-French with
him; and there's a German professor has asked him to get part of a
romance copied that's in the Bodleian--the only manuscript. And Mr.
Hurst says he'll coach me--I can easily do it--and I shall get
ten pounds!"

"Well done, Trotty Veck!" Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately.
"But won't it interfere with your work?"

"Not a bit. It will help it. Father!--I'm going to earn a lot before
long. If it only didn't take such a long time to grow up!" said Nora
impatiently. "One ought to be as old as one feels--and I feel quite
twenty-one!"

Ewen Hooper shook his head.

"That's all wrong. One should be young--and taste being young, every
moment, every day that one can. I wish I'd done it--now that I'm
getting old."

"You're not old!" cried Nora. "You're not, father! You're not to say
it!"

And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and
put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips.

Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him. There
are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the
young--the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves.

But he pulled himself together.

"Dear Trotty Veck, you must go to bed, and let me do my work. But--one
moment!" He laid a hand on her shoulder, and abruptly asked her whether
she thought her Cousin Constance was in love with Douglas Falloden.
"Your mother's always talking to me about it," he said, with a wearied
perplexity.

"I don't know," said Nora, frowning. "But