by being especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always
at hand to furnish the condiment. When his own relatives came
she was treated better. Slowly he took out a bunch of keys from
the waistcoat pocket, and slowly he drew forth a tin box which was
under the bed-clothes.

"You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?" he said,
looking above his spectacles and pausing in the act of opening
the lid.

"Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me
a present the other day, else, of course, I should not have
thought of the matter." But Fred was of a hopeful disposition,
and a vision had presented itself of a sum just large enough
to deliver him from a certain anxiety. When Fred got into debt,
it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other--
he did not necessarily conceive what--would come to pass enabling
him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence
was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity
to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd
as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength
to believe in a whole one.

The deep-veined hands fingered many bank-notes-one after the other,
laying them down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair,
scorning to look eager. He held himself to be a gentleman at heart,
and did not like courting an old fellow for his money. At last,
Mr. Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and presented him
with a little sheaf of notes: Fred could see distinctly that there
were but five, as the less significant edges gaped towards him.