eemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst
of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the
journey, Mr. Heron broke off to ask:

"Where is Joseph? He is late to-night."

"He is kept at the office," replied his mother. "Poor boy! I hope he is
not working too hard; he has been kept nearly every night this week."

Isabel smiled at Ida, for what reason Ida could not guess; and while
she was wondering, there came a knock at the outer door, and presently
Joseph entered.

He was an unprepossessing young man with small eyes and thick lips,
over which it would have been wise of him to wear a big moustache; but
it was the fashion in the city to be clean-shaven, and Mr. Joseph
considered himself the pink of fashion. His clothes fitted him too
tightly, he wore cheap neckties, and ready-made boots, of course, of
patent leather. His dark hair was plastered on the low, retreating
forehead; his face was flushed instead of being, as one would expect,
pale from overwork.

Ida disliked him at the first glance, and disliked him still more at
the second, as she caught his shifty eyes fixed on her with a curious
and half-insolently admiring expression.

He came round and shook hands--his were damp and cold like his
father's--as Mr. Heron introduced them, and in a voice which
unpleasantly matched his face, said that he was glad to see her.

"Tired, Joseph, dear?" murmured his mother, regarding him with a
mixture of pride and commiseration.

"Oh, I'm worn out, that's what I am," he said, as he sank into a chair
and regarded the certainly untempting food with an eye of disfavour.
"Been hard at it all the evening"--he spoke with a Cockney, city
accent, and was rather uncertain about his aspirates--"I work like a
nigger."

"Labour is prayer," remarked his father, as if he were enunciating
something strikingly original. "Nothing is accomplished without toil,
my dear Joseph."

My dear Joseph regarded his father with very much the same expression
he had bestowed upon the mutton.

"And how do you like London, Cousin Ida?" he asked.

He hesitated before the "Cousin Ida," and got it out rather defiantly,
for there was something in the dignity of this pale, refined face which
awed him. It was perhaps the first time in his life Mr. Joseph had sat
at the same table with a lady; for Mr. John Heron had married beneath
him, and for money; and in retiring from the bar, at which he had been
an obvious failure