ne of which he made Pemberton accept, they
laid it out scientifically in old books. This was sure to be a great
day, always spent on the quays, in a rummage of the dusty boxes that
garnish the parapets. Such occasions helped them to live, for their
books ran low very soon after the beginning of their acquaintance.
Pemberton had a good many in England, but he was obliged to write to a
friend and ask him kindly to get some fellow to give him something for
them.

If they had to relinquish that summer the advantage of the bracing
climate the young man couldn't but suspect this failure of the cup when
at their very lips to have been the effect of a rude jostle of his own.
This had represented his first blow-out, as he called it, with his
patrons; his first successful attempt--though there was little other
success about it--to bring them to a consideration of his impossible
position. As the ostensible eve of a costly journey the moment had
struck him as favourable to an earnest protest, the presentation of an
ultimatum. Ridiculous as it sounded, he had never yet been able to
compass an uninterrupted private interview with the elder pair or with
either of them singly. They were always flanked by their elder children,
and poor Pemberton usually had his own little charge at his side. He was
conscious of its being a house in which the surface of one's delicacy got
rather smudged; nevertheless he had preserved the bloom of his scruple
against announcing to Mr. and Mrs. Moreen with publicity that he
shouldn't be able to go on longer without a little money. He was still
simple enough to suppose Ulick and Paula and Amy might not know that
since his arrival he had only had a hundred and forty francs; and he was
magnanimous enough to wish not to compromise their parents in their eyes.
Mr. Moreen now listened to him, as he listened to every one and to every
thing, like a man of the world, and seemed to appeal to him--though not
of course too grossly--to try and be a little more of one himself.
Pemberton recognised in fact the importance of the character--from the
advantage it gave Mr. Moreen. He was not even confused or embarrassed,
whereas the young man in his service was more so than there was any
reason for. Neither was he surprised--at least any more than a gentleman
had to be who freely confessed himself a little shocked--though not
perhaps strictly at Pemberton.

"We must go into this, mustn't we, dear?" he said to his w