vid on the seashore?" she said, turning her soft dark-blue
eyes enquiringly on Reay, while gently checking with one hand the
excited gambols of Charlie, who, as an epicurean dog, always gave
himself up to the wildest enthusiasms at tea-time, owing to his
partiality for a small saucer of cream which came to him at that
hour--"I sometimes think he must expect to pick up a fortune down among
the shells and seaweed, he's so fond of walking about there!"--And she
smiled as she put Helmsley's cup of tea before him, and gently patted
his wrinkled hand in the caressing fashion a daughter might show to a
father whose health gave cause for anxiety.

"Well, _I_ certainly don't go down to the shore in any such
expectation!" said Reay, laughing--"Fortunes are not so easily picked
up, are they, David?"

"No, indeed!" replied Helmsley, and his old eyes sparkled up humorously
under their cavernous brows; "fortunes take some time to make, and one
doesn't meet millionaires every day!"

"Millionaires!" exclaimed Reay--"Don't speak of them! I hate them!"

Helmsley looked at him stedfastly.

"It's best not to hate anybody,"--he said--"Millionaires are often the
loneliest and most miserable of men."

"They deserve to be!" declared Reay, hotly--"It isn't right--it isn't
just that two or three, or let us say four or five men should be able
to control the money-markets of the world. They generally get their
wealth through some unscrupulous 'deal,' or through 'sweating' labour. I
hate all 'cornering' systems. I believe in having enough to live upon,
but not too much."

"It depends on what you call enough,"--said Helmsley, slowly--"We're
told that some people never know when they _have_ enough."

"Why _this_ is enough!" said Reay, looking admiringly round the little
kitchen in which they sat--"This sweet little cottage with this oak
raftered ceiling, and all the dear old-fashioned crockery, and the
ingle-nook over there,--who on earth wants more?"

Mary laughed.

"Oh dear me!" she murmured, gently--"You praise it too much!--it's only
a very poor place, sir,----"

He interrupted her, the colour rushing to his brows.

"Please don't!"

She glanced at him in surprise.

"Don't--what?"

"Don't call me 'sir'! I'm only a poor chap,--my father was a shepherd,
and I began life as a cowherd--I don't want any titles of courtesy."

She still kept her eyes upon him thoughtfully.

"But you're a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.

"I hope