e Roaster, you know--perhaps you've heard of it?"

Mr. Vernon shook his head.

"Ah, well! a great many other people must have done so; for the roaster
made a pile of money, and my father was a rich man. Molly, you can take
that beef tea downstairs and give it to Snaps. He won't eat it, because
he's a most intelligent dog. Thought I'd get her out of the room, sir.
Molly's a good girl, but she's got ears and a tongue."

"So have I," said Drake Vernon, with a faint smile.

"Oh, I don't mind you. It's only right that you should know something
about the people in whose house you are staying."

Drake Vernon frowned slightly, for there was the other side of the
medal: surely, it was only right that the people in whose house he was
staying should know something about himself.

"Father made a lot of money over a roaster; then my mother died. I was
quite a kid when it happened; but Nell just remembers her. Then father
married again; and, being rich, I suppose, wanted a fashionable wife. So
he married mamma. I dare say that she's told you she's a Wolfer?"

Mr. Vernon nodded.

"There's not much in it," said Dick, with charming candor. "We've never
set eyes on any of her swell connections, and I don't think she's ever
heard from them since the smash."

"What smash?" asked Mr. Vernon, with only faint interest.

"Didn't I tell you? Left the part of _Hamlet_ out of the play! Why,
father added a patent coffeepot to the roaster, and lost all his
money--or nearly all. Then he died. And we came here, and----There you
are, sir; that's the story; and the moral is, 'Let well alone'; or 'Be
content with your roaster, and touch not the pot.' Sounds like the title
of a teetotal tract, doesn't it?"

"And you are at school, I suppose? No, you are too old for that."

"Thanks. I was trying not to feel offended," said Dick. "Nothing hurts a
boy of my age like telling him he isn't a man. No; I've left school, and
I'm supposed to be educated; but it's the thinnest kind of supposition.
I don't fancy they teach you much at most schools. They didn't teach me
anything at mine except cricket and football."

"Oxford, Cambridge?" suggested the invalid, leaning on his elbow, and
looking at the boy absently.

"Wouldn't run to it," said Dick. "Mamma said I must begin the
world--sounds as if it were a loaf of bread or an orange. I should have
'begun it' long ago if it were. The difficulty seems to be where to
begin. I'm supposed to have a taste fo