Miriam heard his story.  She had anticipated it, and for the moment she said nothing.  Her first care was to prevent her uncle or aunt from communicating with Cowfold.  She foresaw that her father, if he knew her brother’s disgrace, might possibly stop the allowance.  She at once put on her bonnet and called at the shop.  She made no appeal for reconsideration of the sentence—­all she asked was that there should be silence.  To this Uncle Dabb assented willingly, for Miriam was half a favourite with him, and he even went so far as somewhat to apologise for what he had done.

“But you know,” said he, “this is a shop.  As I have told him over and over again, business is business.  I couldn’t help it, and it’s just as well as he should have a sharpish lesson at first—­nothing like that for curing a man.”

Mr. Dabb unfortunately did not know how much it takes to cure a man of anything.

Miriam felt it would be graceless not to see her aunt, although she had no particular desire for an interview just then.

“My dear Miriam,” began that lady, without waiting for a word, “I do regret so what has happened.  I am so sorry I could not prevent it, but I never interfere in your uncle’s commercial transactions, and reciprocally he never intrudes into my sphere.  It is most unfortunate—­what do you think we can do to arrest this propensity in your brother?”

Miriam was silent.

“It is astonishing how much may be done by cultivating the finer emotions.  Your brother has always seemed to me not sufficiently susceptible.  Supposing I were to lend you a book of my favourite poetry, and you were to read to him, and endeavour to excite an interest in him for higher and better things—­who knows?”

Miriam had no special professional acquaintance with the theory of salvation, but she instinctively felt that a love of drink was not to be put down by the “Keepsake” in red silk.

She was still silent.  At last she said—­“I am much obliged to you, aunt; I will take anything you may like to lend.  You have a good deal of influence, doubtless, over uncle.  If you can persuade him to say what he can in case application is made to him for a character, I shall think it very kind of you.”

“My dear Miriam, I have no influence over your uncle.  His is not a nature upon which I can exert myself.  I think some pieces in this would be suitable;” and Mrs. Dabb offered Miriam a volume of Mrs. Hemans’ works.

Miriam took it, and bade her aunt good-bye.

She was now face to face with a great trouble, and she had to encounter it alone, and with no weapons and with no armour save those which Nature provides.  She was not specially an exile from civilisation; churches and philosophers had striven and demonstrated for thousands of years, and yet she was no better protected than if Socrates, Epictetus, and all ecclesiastical establishments from the time of Moses had never existed.