“What idea?”

“I’ll borrow the money from old Ascott.”

“That means, because he has already given, you would have him keep on giving—­and you would take and take and take—­Ascott, I’m ashamed of you.”

But Ascott only burst out laughing.  “Nonsence!—­he has money and I have none; why shouldn’t he give it me?”

“Why?”—­she repeated, her eyes flashing and her little feminine figure seeming to grow taller as she spoke—­“I’ll tell you, since you don’t seem yourself to understand it.  Because a young man, with health and strength in him, should blush to eat any bread but what he himself earns.  Because he should work at any thing and every thing, stint himself of every luxury and pleasure, rather than ask or borrow, or, except under rare circumstances, rather than be indebted to any living soul for a single half-penny.  I would not, if I were a young man.”

“What a nice young man you would make, Aunt Hilary!”

There was something in the lad’s imperturbable good humor at once irritating and disarming.  Whatever his faults, they were more negative than positive; there was no malice prepense about him, no absolute personal wickedness.  And he had the strange charm of manner and speech which keeps up one’s outer surface of habitual affection toward a person long after all its foundations of trust and respect have hopelessly crumbled away.

“Come now, my pretty aunt must go with me.  She will manage the old ogre much better than I. And he must be managed somehow.  It’s all very fine talking of independence, but isn’t it hard that a poor fellow should be living in constant dread of being carried off to that horrid, uncleanly, beastly den—­bah!  I don’t like thinking of it—­and all for the want of twenty pounds?  You must go to him, Aunt Hilary.”

She saw they must—­there was no help for it.  Even Johanna said so.  It was after all only asking for Ascott’s quarterly allowance three days in advance, for it was due on Tuesday.  But what jarred against her proud, honest spirit was the implication that such a request gave of taking as a right that which had been so long bestowed as a favor.  Nothing but the great strait they were in could ever have driven her to consent that Mr. Ascott should be applied to at all; but since it must be done, she felt that she had better do it herself.  Was it from some lurking doubt or dread that Ascott might not speak the entire truth, as she had insisted upon its being spoken, before Mr. Ascott was asked for any thing? since whatever he gave must be given with a full knowledge on his part of the whole pitiable state of affairs.

It was with a strange, sad feeling—­the sadder because he never seemed to suspect it, but talked and laughed with her as usual—­that she took her nephew’s arm and walked silently through the dark squares, perfectly well aware that he only asked her to go with him in order to do an unpleasant thing which he did not like to do himself, and that she only went with him in the character of watch, or supervisor, to try and save him from doing something which she herself would be ashamed should be done.