“I don’t care, I won’t have it,” and Julia took the matter into her own hands, and began with a flushed face to re-pack the things herself.

“Is it that you think I can’t spare them?” Gillat asked, still bewildered.  “I can—­what an idea,” he laughed.  “What do I want with field-glasses, now?  And as to a watch, my time’s nothing to me!”

“No, I dare say not,” Julia said, but she tied the parcel firmly, then she gave it to him.  “Take it away,” she said, “and don’t try to sell a thing.”

She opened the door as she spoke, and he, accepting it as a hint of dismissal, meekly followed her from the room.  When they had reached the hall above he ventured on a last protest.  “Why may I not sell anything?” he asked.

“Because we have not quite come to that,” she said, with a ring of bitterness in her voice:  “We have come pretty low, I know, with our dodges and our shifts, but we haven’t quite come to depriving you.  Johnny”—­and she stretched out a hand to him, a thing which was rare, for no one thought it necessary to shake hands with Mr. Gillat—­“it’s very good of you to offer; I’m grateful to you; I’m awfully glad you did it; you made me ashamed.”

Johnny looked at her perplexed; the note of bitterness in her voice had deepened to something more he was altogether at a loss to understand.  But she gave him no opportunity for inquiry, for she opened the street door.

“Good-bye,” she said, her usual self again, “and don’t you let me catch you selling those things.”

“Oh, I say!  But how will you manage?” he protested.

“Somehow; I have got several ideas already; I’m better at this sort of game than you are, you know.”

And she shut the door upon him; then she went back to Captain Polkington.

“Father,” he said, “would you mind telling me if you have borrowed any other money?  It would be much simpler if we knew just how we stood.”

The Captain seemed to have a painfully clear idea of how he stood.  “Your mother,” he remarked, with apparent irrelevance, “is such an unreasonable woman; if she were like you—­if she saw things sensibly.  But she won’t, she’ll make a fuss; she will entirely overlook the fact that it is my own money that I have lost.”

“I am afraid she will,” Julia agreed.  “Will you tell me if you lost any one else’s money as well?”

“Oh, a trifle,” the Captain said; “nothing to speak of yesterday; I have borrowed a little now and again, at cards and so on; a trifling accommodation.”

“From whom?”

“Rawson-Clew.”