“Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice.  We are prepared to welcome him into our family.  Let the banns be called and I will compose a nuptial song.”

Sally set about clearing away the tea-things.  She did not answer.  Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.

“What did you think of him, Mr. Philip?”

She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children did, and would not call him Philip.

“I think you’d make an awfully handsome pair.”

She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went on with her business.

“I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,” said Mrs. Athelny, “and I think he’s just the sort to make any girl happy.”

Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously:  it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the moon.

“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to, Sally?” remarked her mother, a little irritably.

“I thought he was a silly.”

“Aren’t you going to have him then?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t know how much more you want,” said Mrs. Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out.  “He’s a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home.  We’ve got quite enough to feed here without you.  If you get a chance like that it’s wicked not to take it.  And I daresay you’d be able to have a girl to do the rough work.”

Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life.  He saw how important it was that each child should be provided for.

“It’s no good your carrying on, mother,” said Sally in her quiet way.  “I’m not going to marry him.”

“I think you’re a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl.”

“If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into service.”

“Don’t be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.”

Philip caught Sally’s eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of amusement.  He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch her sense of humour.  She was an odd girl.

CXVI

During his last year at St. Luke’s Philip had to work hard.  He was contented with life.  He found it very comfortable to be heart-free and to have enough money for his needs.  He had heard people speak contemptuously of money:  he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.  He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance:  you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value.  He lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the