not to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance. We haven't all the
same tastes."

In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being
thrown into the dust-bin. But looking back, I have come to regard
myself rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly. Many folks have I
met since, recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns--many a man who has
slapped his pocket and blessed the day he first met that "Napoleon of
Finance," as later he came to be known among his friends--but it ever
ended so; coloured glass and cut fingers. Is it fairy gold that he
and his kind fling round? It would seem to be.

Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and
apron opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change. New
oilcloth glistened in the passage. Lace curtains, such as in that
neighbourhood were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our
rising fortunes to the street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to
my awed eyes, my father's Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new
ones taking their place in the great wardrobe that hitherto had been
the stronghold of our gentility; to which we had ever turned for
comfort when rendered despondent by contemplation of the weakness of
our outer walls. "Seeing that everything was all right" is how my
mother would explain it. She would lay the lilac silk upon the bed,
fondly soothing down its rustling undulations, lingering lovingly over
its deep frosted flounces of rich Honiton. Maybe she had entered the
room weary looking and depressed, but soon there would proceed from
her a gentle humming as from some small winged thing when the sun
first touches it and warms it, and sometimes by the time the Indian
shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but never would when it
was wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again with the great