mured the grateful
father.

"By the way"--as an after-thought--"what about your little girl?"

She was not a little girl now, and had finished with school; but, oh,
the boon that a few good lessons in music and languages would be to her!

That matter was settled.

"Well, now," said Deb, "we must think about Mary. She is frightfully
thin. I can see that she has had too many worries, as you say. She must
be taken out of them. I want to have her at Redford with me--as soon as
she can get ready--and give her a good long rest, and feed her up, and
make her fat and strong."

"I only wish you could prevail on her," he sighed. "But I am afraid you
will not get her to go anywhere without me. I have a devoted wife, Miss
Pennycuick"--even if she had not tacitly forbidden "Deborah" in her
poor days, he would not have ventured upon the liberty now that she was
rich--"too devoted, if that can be. She insists upon sharing all my
burdens, though I fain would spare her. I know well that, say what I
will, she will never consent to leaving me to struggle with them alone."

"You have not told me what they are," said Deb, who saw that he was in
dread of her going before he could do so.

"Oh, debts--debts--debts!" he answered, with a reckless air. "The
millstone that we hung about our necks when we anticipated that she
would have money, and lived accordingly, and were then left stranded.
The eternal trying to make a shilling go as far as a pound--to make
bricks without straw, like the captive Israelites of old. But why do
you ask me? I hate to talk about it." He made a gesture of putting the
miserable subject aside.

"It was very hard on you," Deb said gently--contradicting the Deb of an
earlier time and different state of things--"to have those
expectations, which were certainly justified, and to be disappointed as
you were. I feel that we Pennycuicks were to blame in that--"

"Oh, dear, no!" he earnestly assured her.

"And that an obligation rests on me, now that I have the means, to make
some compensation to you--to Mary, rather."

"It is like you to think of that. But really--"

"And I put a blank cheque in my pocket, and a stylographic pen--and
will you let me"--she drew forth the articles mentioned, and made a
desk of the top rail of the gate--"will you do me the favour to accept
from me--what shall I say?--five hundred pounds? Would that relieve
you--and Mary--of the immediate worries?"

He said it would, with the ment