Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/180

 Strand; Millicent Henning having made it clear to him that on this occasion she expected something better than the pit. 'Should you like the royal box, or a couple of stalls at ten shillings apiece?' he asked of her, with a frankness of irony which, with this young lady, fortunately, it was perfectly possible to practise. She had answered that she would content herself with a seat in the second balcony, in the very front; and as such a position involved an expenditure which he was still unable to meet, he waited one night upon Mr. Vetch, to whom he had already, more than once, had recourse in moments of pecuniary embarrassment. His relations with the caustic fiddler were peculiar; they were much better in fact than they were in theory. Mr. Vetch had let him know long before this, and with the purpose of covering Pinnie to the utmost the part he had played when the question of the child's being taken to Mrs. Bowerbank's institution was so distressingly presented; and Hyacinth, in the face of this information, had inquired, with some sublimity, what the devil the fiddler had to do with his private affairs. Anastasius Vetch had replied that it was not as an affair of his, but as an affair of Pinnie's, that he had considered the matter; and Hyacinth afterwards had let the question drop, though he had never been formally reconciled to his officious neighbour. Of course his feeling about him had been immensely modified by the trouble Mr. Vetch had taken to get him a place with old Crookenden; and at the period of which I write it had long been familiar to him that the fiddler didn't care a straw what he thought of his advice at the famous crisis, and entertained himself with watching the career of a youth put together of such