“I thought we were to have the tart to-night,” Julia interrupted, thinking of Johnny Gillat, who was coming to spend the evening with her father.

Mrs. Polkington thought of him too, but she did not change her mind on this account.  “We can’t, then,” she said, and turned to the discussion of other matters.  She had carried these as far as the probable date of marriage, and the preferment the young man might easily expect, when the little servant came up to announce Mr. Gillat.

Mrs. Polkington did not express impatience.  “Is he in the dining-room?” she said.  “I hope you lighted the heater, Mary.”

Mary said she had, and Mrs. Polkington returned to her interesting subject, only pausing to remark, “How tiresome that your father is not back yet!”

For a little none of the three girls moved, then Julia rose.

“Are you going down to Mr. Gillat?” her mother asked.  “There really is no necessity; he is perfectly happy with the paper.”

Perhaps he was, though the paper was a half-penny morning one; he did not make extravagant demands on fate, or anything else; nevertheless, Julia went down.

The Polkingtons’ house was furnished on an ascending scale, which found its zenith in the drawing-room, but deteriorated again very rapidly afterwards.  The dining-room, being midway between the kitchen and the drawing-room, was only a middling-looking apartment.  They did not often have a fire there; a paraffin lamp stove stood in the fire-place, leering with its red eye as if it took a wicked satisfaction in its own smell.  Before the fire-place, re-reading the already-known newspaper by the light of one gas jet, sat Johnny Gillat.  Poor old Johnny, with his round, pink face, whereon a grizzled little moustache looked as much out of place as on a twelve-year-old school-boy.  There was something of the school-boy in his look and in his deprecating manner, especially to Mrs. Polkington; he had always been a little deprecating to her even when he had first known her, a bride, while he himself was the wealthy bachelor friend of her husband.  He was still a bachelor, and still her husband’s friend, but the wealth had gone long ago.  He had now only just enough to keep him, fortunately so secured that he could not touch the principal.  It was a mercy he had it, for there was no known work at which he could have earned sixpence, unless perhaps it was road scraping under a not too exacting District Council.  He was a harmless enough person, but when he took it into his head to leave his lodgings in town for others, equally cheap and nasty, at Marbridge, Mrs. Polkington felt fate was hard upon her.  It was like having two Captain Polkingtons, of a different sort, but equally unsuitable for public use, in the place.  In self defence she had been obliged to make definite rules for Mr. Gillat’s coming and going about the house, and still more definite rules as to the rooms in which he might be found.  The dining-room was allowed him, and there he was when Julia came.