him a kiss when you see him,
and don't seem to notice it. There is not a man in the world has a
higher regard for me than your father, but if any one were to see him
in one of his tantrums they would suppose he meant to be uncivil."

"I hope he won't be downright unkind, Septimus," said his wife.

"Never fear! The kindest-hearted man in the world is your father."

"So he's here!" That was the first word of greeting which Sir Thomas
addressed to his wife in her bed-room.

"Yes, Tom;--they're here."

"When did they come?"

"Well;--to tell the truth, we found them here."

"The ----!" But Sir Thomas restrained the word on the right, or
inside, of the teeth.

"They thought we were to be here a day sooner, and so they came on
the Wednesday morning. They were to come, you know."

"I wish I knew when they were to go."

"You don't want to turn your own daughter out of your own house?"

"Why doesn't he get a house of his own for her? For her sake why
doesn't he do it? He has the spending of L6,000 a year of my money,
and yet I am to keep him! No;--I don't want to turn my daughter out
of my house; but it'll end in my turning him out."

When a week had passed by Mr. Traffick had not been as yet turned
out. Sir Thomas, when he came back to Merle Park on the following
Friday, condescended to speak to his son-in-law, and to say something
to him as to the news of the day; but this he did in an evident
spirit of preconceived hostility. "Everything is down again," he
said.

"Fluctuations are always common at this time of the year," said
Traffick; "but I observe that trade always becomes brisk a little
before Christmas."

"To a man with a fixed income, like you, it doesn't much matter,"
said Sir Thomas.

"I was looking at it in a public light."

"Exactly. A man who has an income, and never spends it, need not
trouble himself with private views as to the money market." Mr.
Traffick rubbed his hands, and asked whether the new buildings at the
back of the Lombard Street premises were nearly finished.

Mr. Traffick's economy had a deleterious effect upon Gertrude, which
she, poor girl, did not deserve. Sir Thomas, deeply resolving in his
mind that he would, at some not very distant date, find means by
which he would rid himself of Mr. Traffick, declared to himself that
he would not, at any rate, burden himself with another son-in-law
of the same kind. Frank Houston was, to his thinking, of the same
kind, and therefore h