The Good Comrade | Page 7

just now, with the engagement,
Mr. Frazer in and out. It is very unfortunate, very."
By this time he had untied his parcel, and flattening the paper on his
knees began to put the contents on the table. There were some
field-glasses, a breast pin, and a few other such things; when he had put
them all out he felt in his waistcoat-pocket for his watch.
"They would fetch a trifle," he said, regarding the row a little proudly.
"Those?" Julia asked, puzzled.
"Yes," Mr. Gillat said; "not a great deal, of course, but it would be a
help--it might pay the butcher's bill. It's a great thing to have the
butcher's bill paid; I've heard my landlady say so; it gives a standing
with the other tradespeople, and that's what you want--she often says
so."
"You mean you think of selling them for us?" Julia asked, fixing her
keen eyes on Johnny, so that he felt very guilty, and as if he ought to
excuse himself. But before he could do it she had swept his belongings
together. "You won't do anything of the kind," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because we won't have it. Pack them up."
"Oh, but," Johnny protested, "it would be a little help, it would indeed;
they would fetch something, the glasses are good ones, though a bit
old-fashioned, and the watch--"

"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."
Julia nodded; this was bad, but it might have been worse. Mr.
Rawson-Clew was not a personal friend of the Polkingtons, and he was
not a man in an inferior position who might presume upon his loan to
the Captain to establish a friendly footing. On the contrary, he was in a
superior position, so much so that for a moment Julia was at a loss to
understand how he came to accommodate her father. Then she recalled
his face--he had been pointed out to her--he looked a good-natured fool;
probably he had met the Captain somewhere and been sorry for him, or
perhaps he did not like to say "no." In any case he had lent the money
and, so