Most true, some kind of debt deserves only compassion.  The merchant suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S. D. to the end of their days.

But these are debtors by accident, not error.  The deliberate debtor, who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience’ sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make “ends meet,” but does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as these it is right to have no mercy—­they deserve none.

To which of these classes young Ascott Leaf belonged his story will show.  I tell it, or rather let it tell itself, and point its own moral; it is the story of hundreds and thousands.

That a young fellow should not enjoy his youth would be hard; that it should not be pleasant to him to dress well, live well, and spend with open hand upon himself as well as others, no one will question.  No one would ever wish it otherwise.  Many a kindly spendthrift of twenty-one makes a prudent paterfamilias at forty, while a man who in his twenties showed a purposeless niggardliness, would at sixty grow into the most contemptible miser alive.  There is something even in the thoughtless liberality of youth to which one’s heart warms, even while one’s wisdom reproves.—­But what struck Elizabeth was that Ascott’s liberalities were always toward himself, and himself only.

Sometimes when she took in a parcel of new clothes, while others yet unpaid for were tossing in wasteful disorder about his room, or when she cleaned indefinite pairs of handsome boots, and washed dozens of the finest cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, her spirit grew hot within her to remember Miss Hilary’s countless wants and contrivances in the matter of dress, and all the little domestic comforts which Miss Leaf’s frail health required—­things which never once seemed to cross the nephew’s imagination.  Of course not, it will be said; how could a young man be expected to trouble himself about these things?

But they do though.  Answer, many a widow’s son; many a heedful brother of orphan sisters; many a solitary clerk living and paying his way upon the merest pittance; is it not better to think of others than one’s self?  Can a man, even a young man, find his highest happiness in mere personal enjoyment?

However, let me cease throwing these pebbles of preaching under the wheels of my story; as it moves on it will preach enough for itself.

Elizabeth’s annoyances, suspicions, and conscience-pricks as to whether she ought or ought not to communicate both, came to an end at last.  Gradually she made up her mind that, even if it did look like tale bearing, on the following Saturday night Miss Hilary must know all.