und sum. Suppose you write down eight hundred. I
shan't want more for some months. If you fancy it too much..."

Mr. Pole had lifted his head. But he spoke nothing. His lips and brows
were rigid in apparent calculation. Wilfrid kept his position for
a minute or so; and then, a little piqued, he moved about. He had
inherited the antipathy to the discussion of the money question, and
fretted to find it unnecessarily prolonged.

"Shall I come to you on this business another time, sir?"

"No, God bless my soul!" cried his father; "are you going to keep this
hanging over me for ever? Eight hundred, you said." He mumbled: "salary
of a chief clerk of twenty years' standing. Eight: twice four:--there
you have it exactly."

"Will you send it me in a letter?" said Wilfrid, out of patience.

"I'll send it you in a letter," assented his father. Upon which Wilfrid
changed his mind. "I can take a chair, though. I can easily wait for it
now."

"Save trouble, if I send it. Eh?"

"Do you wish to see whether you can afford it, sir?"

"I wish to see you show more sense--with your confounded 'afford.' Have
you any idea of bankers' books?--bankers' accounts?" Mr. Pole fished his
cheque-book from a drawer and wrote Wilfrid's name and the sum, tore
out the leaf and tossed it to him. "There, I've written to-day. Don't
present it for a week." He rubbed his forehead hastily, touching here
and there a paper to put it scrupulously in a line with the others.
Wilfrid left him, and thought: "Kind old boy! Of course, he always means
kindly, but I think I see a glimpse of avarice as a sort of a sign of
age coming on. I hope he'll live long!"

Wilfrid was walking in the garden, imagining perhaps that he was
thinking, as the swarming sensations of little people help them to
imagine, when Cornelia ran hurriedly up to him and said: "Come with me
to papa. He's ill: I fear he is going to have a fit."

"I left him sound and well, just now," said Wilfrid. "This is your
mania."

"I found him gasping in his chair not two minutes after you quitted him.
Dearest, he is in a dangerous state!"

Wilfrid stept back to his father, and was saluted with a ready "Well?"
as he entered; but the mask had slipped from half of the old man's face,
and for the first time in his life Wilfrid perceived that he had become
an old man.

"Well, sir, you sent for me?" he said.

"Girls always try to persuade you you're ill--that's all," returned Mr.
Pole. His voice was