Autumn soon lapsed into winter: Christmas came and went, bringing,
not Ascott, as they hoped and he had promised, but a very serious
evil in the shape of sundry bills of his, which, he confessed in a
most piteous letter to his Aunt Hilary, were absolutely unpayable out
of his godfather's allowance. They were not large--or would not have
seemed so to rich people--and they were for no more blamable luxuries
than horse hire, and a dinner or two to friends out in the country;
but they looked serious to a household which rarely was more than
five pounds beforehand with the world.

He had begged Aunt Hilary to keep his secret, but that was evidently
impossible; so on the day the school accounts were being written out
and sent in, and their amount anxiously reckoned, she laid before her
sisters the lad's letter, full of penitence and promises: "I will be
careful--I will indeed--if you will help me out this once, dear Aunt
Hilary; and don't think too ill of me. I have done nothing wicked.
And you don't know London; you don't know, with a lot of young
fellows about one, how very hard it is to say no."

At that unlucky postscript the Misses Leaf sorrowfully exchanged
looks. Little the lad thought about it; but these few words were the
very sharpest pang Ascott had ever given to his aunts.

"What's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh." "Like father
like son." "The sins of the parents shall be visited on the
children." So runs many a proverb: so confirms the unerring decree of
a just God, who would not be a just God did He allow Himself to break
His own righteous laws for the government of the universe; did He
falsify the requirements of His own holy and pure being, by