’I’m not quite sure.  I know I’d go back and be Medora, if I could.  Mamma is always telling Polly that she must be careful about William’s dinner.  But Conrad didn’t care for his dinner.  “Light toil! to cull and dress my frugal fare!  See, I have plucked the fruit that promised best."’

‘And how often do you think Conrad got drunk?’

’I don’t think he got drunk at all.  There is no reason why he should any more than William.  Come along, and take me down to dinner.  After all, papa’s leg of mutton is better than Medora’s apples, when one is as hungry as I am.’

The leg of mutton on this occasion consisted of soup, fish, and a bit of roast beef, and a couple of boiled fowls.  ’If I had only two children instead of twelve,’ Mr Walker,’ said the host, ’I’d give you a dinner a la Russe.’

’I don’t begrudge Mrs Toogood a single arrow in her quiver on that score,’ said Mr Walker.

’People are getting to be so luxurious that one can’t live up to them at all,’ said Mrs Toogood.  ’We dined out here with some newcomers in the square only last week.  We had asked them before, and they came quite in a quiet way—­just like this; and when we got there we found they’d four kinds of ices after dinner!’

‘And not a morsel of food on the table fit to eat,’ said Toogood.  ’I never was so poisoned in my life.  As for soup—­it was just the washings of the pastrycook’s kettle next door.’

‘And how is one to live with such people, Mr Walker?’ continued Mrs Toogood.  ’Of course we can’t ask them back again.  We can’t give them four kinds of ices.’

’But would that be necessary?  Perhaps they haven’t got twelve children.’

‘They haven’t got any at all,’ said Toogood, triumphing; ’not a chick belonging to them.  But you see one must do as other people do.  I hate anything grand.  I wouldn’t want more than this for myself, if bank-notes were as plenty as curl-papers.’

‘Nobody has any curl-papers now, papa,’ said Lucy.

‘But I can’t bear to be outdone,’ said Mr Toogood.  ’I think it’s very unpleasant—­people living in that sort of way.  It’s all very well telling me that I needn’t live so too;—­and of course I don’t.  I can’t afford to have four men in from the confectioner’s dressed a sight better than myself, at ten shillings a head.  I can’t afford it, and I don’t do it.  But the worst of it is that I suffer because other people do it.  It stands to reason that I must either be driven along with the crowd, or else be left behind.  Now, I don’t like either.  And what’s the end of it?  Why I’m half carried away and half left behind.’

’Upon my word, papa, I don’t think you’re carried away at all, said Lucy.

’Yes, I am; and I’m ashamed of myself.  Mr Walker, I don’t dare to ask you to drink a glass of wine with me in my own house—­that’s what I don’t—­because it’s the proper thing for you to wait till somebody brings it to you, and then drink it by yourself.  There is no knowing whether I mightn’t offend you.’  And Mr Toogood as he spoke grasped the decanter at his elbow.  Mr Walker grasped another at his elbow, and the two attorneys took their glass of wine together.