“She is a traitress.”

“But her husband could put a good deal of money in Christopher’s way.”

“I can’t help it.  She is a traitress.”

“And you have quarrelled with her about an old wardrobe.”

“No, for her disloyalty, and her base good-for-nothingness.  Oh! oh! oh!”

Uncle Philip got up, looking sour.  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Christopher,” said he, very dryly.

Christopher accompanied him to the foot of the stairs.  “Well, Christopher,” said he, “matrimony is a blunder at the best; and you have not done the thing by halves.  You have married a simpleton.  She will be your ruin.”

“Uncle Philip, since you only come here to insult us, I hope in future you will stay at home.”

“Oh! with pleasure, sir.  Good-by!”

CHAPTER VII.

Christopher Staines came back, looking pained and disturbed.  “There,” said he, “I feared it would come to this.  I have quarrelled with Uncle Philip.”

“Oh! how could you?”

“He affronted me.”

“What about?”

“Never you mind.  Don’t let us say anything more about it, darling.  It is a pity, a sad pity—­he was a good friend of mine once.”

He paused, entered what had passed in his diary, and then sat down, with a gentle expression of sadness on his manly features.  Rosa hung about him, soft and pitying, till it cleared away, at all events for the time.

Next day they went together to clear the goods Rosa had purchased.  Whilst the list was being made out in the office, in came the fair-haired boy, with a ten-pound note in his very hand.  Rosa caught sight of it, and turned to the auctioneer, with a sweet, pitying face: 

“Oh! sir, surely you will not take all that money from him, poor child, for a rickety old chair.”

The auctioneer stared with amazement at her simplicity, and said, “What would the vendors say to me?”

She looked distressed, and said, “Well, then, really we ought to raise a subscription, poor thing!”

“Why, ma’am,” said the auctioneer, “he isn’t hurt:  the article belonged to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn’t on good terms; so he demanded a public sale.  She will get back four pun ten out of it.”  Here the clerk put in his word.  “And there’s five pounds paid, I forgot to tell you.”

“Oh! left a deposit, did he?”

“No, sir.  But the laughing hyena gave you five pounds at the end of the sale.”

“The laughing hyena, Mr. Jones?”

“Oh! beg pardon; that is what we call him in the room.  He has got such a curious laugh.”

“Oh!  I know the gent.  He is a retired doctor.  I wish he’d laugh less and buy more:  and he gave you five pounds towards the young gentleman’s arm-chair!  Well, I should as soon have expected blood from a flint.  You have got five pounds to pay, sir:  so now the chair will cost your mamma ten shillings.  Give him the order and the change, Mr. Jones.”