“Iris, my dear,” he said, “about this other world, where the people amuse themselves; the world which lives in the squares and in the big houses on the Chelsea Embankment here, you know—­how should you like, just for a change, to belong to that world and have no work to do?”

“I don’t know,” she replied carelessly, because the question did not interest her.

“You would have to leave me, of course.  You would sever your connection, as they say, with the shop.”

“Please, don’t let us talk nonsense, grandfather.”

“You would have to be ashamed, perhaps, of ever having taught for your living.”

“Now that I never should be—­never, not if they made me a duchess.”

“You would go dressed in silk and velvet.  My dear, I should like to see you dressed up just for once, as we have seen them at the theater.”

“Well, I should like one velvet dress in my life.  Only one.  And it should be crimson—­a beautiful, deep, dark crimson.”

“Very good.  And you would drive in a carriage instead of an omnibus; you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many second hand books as you pleased.  There are rich people, I believe, ostentatious people, who buy new books.  But you, my dear, have been better brought up.  No books are worth buying till they have stood the criticism of a whole generation at least.  Never buy new books, my dear.”

“I won’t,” said Iris.  “But, you dear old man, what have you got in your head to-night?  Why in the world should we talk about getting rich?”

“I was only thinking,” he said, “that perhaps, you might be so much happier—­”

“Happier?  Nonsense!  I am as happy as I can be.  Six pupils already.  To be sure I have lost one,” she sighed; “and the best among them all.”

When her grandfather left her, Iris placed candles on the writing-table, but did not light them, though it was already pretty dark.  She had half an hour to wait; and she wanted to think, and candles are not necessary for meditation.  She sat at the open window and suffered her thoughts to ramble where they pleased.  This is a restful thing to do, especially if your windows look upon a tolerably busy but not noisy London road.  For then, it is almost as good as sitting beside a swiftly-running stream; the movement of the people below is like the unceasing flow of the current; the sound of the footsteps is like the whisper of the water along the bank; the echo of the half heard talk strikes your ear like the mysterious voices wafted to the banks from the boats as they go by; and the lights of the shops and the street presently become spectral and unreal like lights seen upon the river in the evening.

Iris had a good many pupils—­six, in fact, as she had boasted; why, then, was she so strangely disturbed on account of one?