bill, paying one
hundred pounds for every sovereign you let me have now. Come, old lady:
you don't get such interest every day, I'll bet."

"I don't want any interest from you, Joel," she replied, simply. "If
you're sure I can have it back before Christmas, I think I can manage
thirty pounds. It will do in the morning, I suppose?"

He nodded an amused affirmative. "Why--you don't imagine, do you,"
he said, "that all this gold is to rain down, and none of it hit you?
Interest? Why of course you'll get interest--and capital thrown in. What
did you suppose?"

"I don't ask anything for myself," she made answer, with a note of
resolution in her voice. "Of course if you like to do things for the
children, it won't be me who'll stand in their light. They've been
spoiled for my kind of life as it is."

"I'll do things for everybody," he affirmed roundly. "Let's see--how old
is Alfred?"

"He'll be twenty in May--and Julia is fourteen months older than he is."

"Gad!" was Thorpe's meditative comment. "How they shoot up! Why I was
thinking she was a little girl." "She never will be tall, I'm afraid,"
said the literal mother. "She favours her father's family. But Alfred is
more of a Thorpe. I'm sorry you missed seeing them last summer--but of
course they didn't stop long with me. This was no place for them--and
they had a good many invitations to visit schoolfellows and friends in
the country. Alfred reminds me very much of what you were at his age:
he's got the same good opinion of himself, too--and he's not a bit
fonder of hard work."

"There's one mighty big difference between us, though," remarked Thorpe.
"He won't start with his nose held down to the grindstone by an old
father hard as nails. He'll start like a gentleman--the nephew of a rich
man."

"I'm almost afraid to have such notions put in his head," she replied,
with visible apprehension. "You mustn't encourage him to build too high
hopes, Joel. It's speculation, you know--and anything might happen to
you. And then--you may marry, and have sons of your own."

He lifted his brows swiftly--as if the thought were new to his mind. A
slow smile stole into the little wrinkles about his eyes. He opened his
lips as if to speak, and then closed them again.

"Well," he said at last, abruptly straightening himself, and casting an
eye about for his coat and hat. "I'll be round in the morning--on my way
to the City. Good-bye till then."

CHAPTER IV

IN Chari