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 should Nature keep me alive, if I find the world so bitter when I am but twenty-five?’”

“Irrelevant,” I retorted. “We were speaking of the change I propose to make.”

“Precisely,” remarked Miss Berrith. “What is change if not halves and quarters and fifties and twenty-fives?”

Once more I felt that she had the best of me, and I was correspondingly relieved when she took her departure, promising to acquaint her father with my desire to meet him at the agent’s on the following day to conclude our bargain. I was gratified to note that, five minutes later, I preserved no recollection of her face beyond the fact that she had good teeth and freckles on her nose.

Sometimes, in the course of an uncommonly good dinner, you may have added to your enjoyment of its delicacies by an endeavour to realize how differently you would feel as a pauper, munching on a crust. It was in somewhat the same spirit that I seated myself