It makes me so ashamed! When I go into Cargill’s shop to order the joint, he speaks to me so shortly and makes me wait after the other customers, all because our bill’s mounting up the whole time. And yet I daren’t stop ordering from him. I believe he’d run us in if I did.”

The Rector frowned. “What! Do you mean to say the fellow has been impertinent to you?”

“I didn’t say he’d been impertinent, Father. But you can’t blame him if he’s angry when his bill’s not paid.”

“I most certainly can blame him! It is simply abominable how these people take it upon themselves to behave nowadays—abominable! But there you are, you see. That is the kind of thing that we are exposed to in this delightful century. That is democracy—progress, as they are pleased to call it. Don’t order from the fellow again. Tell him at once that you are taking your account elsewhere. That’s the only way to treat these people.”

“But, Father, that doesn’t settle anything. Really and truly, don’t you think we ought to pay him? Surely we can get hold of the money somehow? Couldn’t you sell out some shares, or something?”

“My dear child, don’t talk to me about selling out shares! I have just had the most disagreeable news from my broker. He tells me that my Sumatra Tin shares have dropped from seven and fourpence to six and a penny. It means a loss of nearly sixty pounds. I am telling him to sell out at once before they drop any further.”

“Then if you sell out you’ll have some ready money, won’t you? Don’t you think it would be better to get out of debt once and for all?”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” said the Rector more calmly, putting his pipe back in his mouth. “You know nothing whatever about these matters. I shall have to reinvest at once in something more hopeful—it’s the only way of getting my money back.”

With one thumb in the belt of his cassock he frowned abstractedly at the steel engraving. His broker had advised United Celanese. Here—in Sumatra Tin, United Celanese, and numberless other remote and dimly imagined companies—was the central cause of the Rector’s money troubles. He was an inveterate gambler. Not, of course, that he thought of it as gambling; it was merely a lifelong search for a “good investment.” On coming of age he had inherited four thousand pounds, which had gradually dwindled, thanks to his “investments,” to about twelve hundred. What was worse, every year he managed to scrape together, out of his miserable income, another fifty pounds which vanished by the same road. It is a curious fact that the lure of a “good investment” seems to haunt clergymen more persistently than any other class of man. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of the demons in female shape who used to haunt the anchorites of the Dark Ages.

“I shall buy five hundred United Celanese,” said the Rector finally.

Dorothy began to give up hope. Her father was now thinking of his “investments” (she knew nothing whatever about these “investments,” except that they went wrong with phenomenal regularity), and in another moment the question of the shop-debts would have slipped entirely out of his mind. She made a final effort.

“Father, let’s get this settled, please. Do you think you’ll be able to let me have some extra money fairly soon? Not this moment, perhaps—but in the next month or two?”

“No, my dear, I don’t. About Christmas time, possibly—it’s very unlikely even then. But for the present, certainly not. I haven’t a halfpenny I can spare.”

“But, Father, it’s so horrible to feel we can’t pay our debts! It disgraces us so! Last time Mr. Welwyn-Foster was here” (Mr.