After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she could not make up her mind to say.  He put out an arm, as she stood beside his chair, and drew her to him.

“Dear little Trotty Veck!” It had been his pet name for her as a child.  Nora, for answer, bent her head, and kissed him.

“Father”—­she broke out—­“I’ve got my first job!”

He looked up enquiringly.

“Mr. Hurst”—­she named her English Literature tutor, a fellow of Marmion—­“has got it for me.  I’ve been doing some Norman-French with him; and there’s a German professor has asked him to get part of a romance copied that’s in the Bodleian—­the only manuscript.  And Mr. Hurst says he’ll coach me—­I can easily do it—­and I shall get ten pounds!”

“Well done, Trotty Veck!” Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately.  “But won’t it interfere with your work?”

“Not a bit.  It will help it.  Father!—­I’m going to earn a lot before long.  If it only didn’t take such a long time to grow up!” said Nora impatiently.  “One ought to be as old as one feels—­and I feel quite twenty-one!”

Ewen Hooper shook his head.

“That’s all wrong.  One should be young—­and taste being young, every moment, every day that one can.  I wish I’d done it—­now that I’m getting old.”

“You’re not old!” cried Nora.  “You’re not, father!  You’re not to say it!”

And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips.

Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him.  There are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the young—­the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves.

But he pulled himself together.

“Dear Trotty Veck, you must go to bed, and let me do my work.  But—­one moment!” He laid a hand on her shoulder, and abruptly asked her whether she thought her Cousin Constance was in love with Douglas Falloden.  “Your mother’s always talking to me about it,” he said, with a wearied perplexity.

“I don’t know,” said Nora, frowning.  “But I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Then I shall have to make some enquiries,” said Connie’s guardian, with resignation.  “She’s a masterful young woman.  But she can be very sweet when she likes.  Do you see what she gave me to-day?”

He pointed to a beautiful Viennese edition of Aeschylus, in three sumptuous volumes, which had just appeared and was now lying on the Reader’s table.

Nora took it up with a cry of pleasure.  She had her father’s passion for books.