let her affections loose on young Timmins, an Anglo-Saxon and a
Christian, what can we do? How stop the mesalliance? We have not, in
our little regiment, one fair Hebrew boy to smile away her maiden blame
among the Hebrew mothers of Maida Vale, and to cut out Timmins. And of
course it is as bad with the men. If young Isaacs wants to marry Miss
Julia Timmins, I have no Rebecca to slip at him. The Semitic demand,
though large and perhaps lucrative, cannot be met out of a purely Aryan
supply.'

Business was pretty slack, and so Merton rather rejoiced over the
application of a Mrs. Nicholson, from The Laburnums, Walton-on-Dove,
Derbyshire. Mrs. Nicholson's name was not in Burke's 'Landed Gentry,'
and The Laburnums could hardly be estimated as one of the stately homes
of England. Still, the lady was granted an interview. She was what the
Scots call 'a buddy;' that is, she was large, round, attired in black,
between two ages, and not easily to be distinguished, by an unobservant
eye, from buddies as a class. After greetings, and when enthroned in the
client's chair, Mrs. Nicholson stated her case with simplicity and
directness.

'It is my ward,' she said, 'Barbara Monypenny. I must tell you that she
was left in my charge till she is twenty-six. I and her lawyers make her
an allowance out of her property, which she is to get when she marries
with my consent, at whatever age.'

'May I ask how old the lady is at present?' said Merton.

'She is twenty-two.'

'Your kindness in taking charge of her is not not wholly uncompensated?'