had been tired, and Maud had taken it
for haughtiness, and said he was looking down on them. But this passed.
They did not fall in love with him, nor he with them, but a morning was
spent very pleasantly in snow-balling in the back garden. Ansell was
rather different to what he was in Cambridge, but to Rickie not less
attractive. And there was a curious charm in the hum of the shop, which
swelled into a roar if one opened the partition door on a market-day.

"Listen to your money!" said Rickie. "I wish I could hear mine. I wish
my money was alive."

"I don't understand."

"Mine's dead money. It's come to me through about six dead
people--silently."

"Getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each time, on
account of the death-duties."

"It needed to get respectable."

"Why? Did your people, too, once keep a shop?"

"Oh, not as bad as that! They only swindled. About a hundred years ago
an Elliot did something shady and founded the fortunes of our house."

"I never knew any one so relentless to his ancestors. You make up for
your soapiness towards the living."

"You'd be relentless if you'd heard the Silts, as I have, talk about 'a
fortune, small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade!' Of course Aunt Emily is
rather different. Oh, goodness me! I've forgotten my aunt. She lives not
so far. I shall have to call on her."

Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Failing, and said he should like to pay his
respects. He told her about the Ansells, and so worded the letter that
she might reasonably have sent an invitation to his friend.

She replied that she was looking forward to their tete-a-tete.

"You mustn't go round by the trains," said Mr. Ansell. "It means
changing at Salisbury. By the road it's no great way. Stewart shall
drive you over Salisbury Plain, and fetch you too."

"There's too much snow," said Ansell.

"Then the girls shall take you in their sledge."

"That I will," said Maud, who was not unwilling to see the inside of
Cadover. But Rickie went round by the trains.

"We have all missed you," said Ansell, when he returned. "There is a
general feeling that you are no nuisance, and had better stop till the
end of the vac."

This he could not do. He was bound for Christmas to the Silts--"as a
REAL guest," Mrs. Silt had written, underlining the word "real" twice.
And after Christmas he must go to the Pembrokes.

"These are no reasons. The only real reason for doing a thing is because
you want to do