"There,"
said he, "I feared it would come to this. I have quarrelled with Uncle
Philip."
"Oh! how could you?"
"He affronted me."
"What about?"
"Never you mind. Don't let us say anything more about it, darling. It is
a pity, a sad pity--he was a good friend of mine once."
He paused, entered what had passed in his diary, and then sat down, with
a gentle expression of sadness on his manly features. Rosa hung about
him, soft and pitying, till it cleared away, at all events for the time.
Next day they went together to clear the goods Rosa had purchased.
Whilst the list was being made out in the office, in came the
fair-haired boy, with a ten-pound note in his very hand. Rosa caught
sight of it, and turned to the auctioneer, with a sweet, pitying face:
"Oh! sir, surely you will not take all that money from him, poor child,
for a rickety old chair."
The auctioneer stared with amazement at her simplicity, and said, "What
would the vendors say to me?"
She looked distressed, and said, "Well, then, really we ought to raise a
subscription, poor thing!"
"Why, ma'am," said the auctioneer, "he isn't hurt: the article belonged
to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn't on good terms;
so he demanded a public sale.
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