or very precarious income, who, rabid in the pursuit of gentility, signed agreements they had little chance of fulfilling; when in pecuniary straits, they either raised money upon the instruments, or allowed them to fall into the hands of distraining creditors.  Inquiry into the circumstances of a would-be customer sometimes had ludicrous results; a newly-married couple, for instance, would be found tenanting two top-floor rooms, the furnishing whereof seemed to them incomplete without the piano of which their friends and relatives boasted.  Not a few professional swindlers came to the office; confederate rogues, vouching for each other’s respectability, got possession of pianos merely to pawn or sell them, having paid no more than the first month’s charge.  It was Mr Lord’s experience that year by year the recklessness of the vulgar became more glaring, and deliberate fraud more artful.  To-day he had successfully prosecuted a man who seemed to have lived for some time on the hirepurchase system, and it made him unusually cheerful.

‘You don’t think of going to see the Queen to-morrow?’ said his daughter, smiling.

‘What have I to do with the Queen?  Do you wish to go?’

’Not to see Her Majesty.  I care as little about her as you do.  But I thought of having a walk in the evening.’

Nancy phrased it thus with intention.  She wished to intimate that, at her age, it could hardly be necessary to ask permission.  But her father looked surprised.

‘In the evening?  Where?’

’Oh, about the main streets—­to see the people and the illuminations.’

Her voice was not quite firm.

‘But,’ said her father, ’there’ll be such a swarm of blackguards as never was known.  How can you go into such a crowd?  It’s astonishing that you should think of it.’

‘The blackguards will be outnumbered by the decent people, father.’

‘You suppose that’s possible?’ he returned gloomily.

‘Oh, I think so,’ Nancy laughed.  ’At all events, there’ll be a great majority of people who pretend to be decent.  I have asked Jessica Morgan to go with me.’

’What right had you to ask her, without first finding out whether you could go or not?’

It was spoken rather gravely than severely.  Mr. Lord never looked fixedly at his daughter, and even a glance at her face was unusual; but at this juncture he met her eyes for an instant.  The nervous motion with which he immediately turned aside had been marked by Nancy on previous occasions, and she had understood it as a sign of his lack of affection for her.

‘I am twenty-three years old, father,’ she replied, without aggressiveness.

‘That would be something of an answer if you were a man,’ observed the father, his eyes cast down.

‘Because I am a woman, you despise me?’

Stephen was startled at this unfamiliar mode of address.  He moved uneasily.

’If I despised you, Nancy, I shouldn’t care very much what you did.  I suppose you must do as you like, but you won’t go with my permission.’