‘Very good,’ she answers, ‘and don’t _you_ forget that we expect you to be one of our party to Italy.’ ‘Yes! indeed,’ echoes Mabel with a parting glance, ‘I shall not enjoy my trip at all now, unless Mr Tresham goes with us!’ ‘What a good-looking fellow!’ she exclaims as soon as the door has closed behind him. ‘Aunty! why did you never tell me what he was like?’ ‘My dear child, where was the use of talking of him? The unfortunate man is married, and has no money. Had he been rich and a bachelor, it would have been a different thing!’ ‘I don’t know that,’ says Miss Mabel, ‘for my part I prefer married men to flirt with; they’re so safe. Besides, it’s such fun making the wives jealous.’ ‘It would take a great deal to make Mrs Tresham jealous,’ says the elder lady. ‘They’re past all that, my dear. So you can flirt with Roland to your heart’s content, only don’t go too far. Remember Lord Ernest Freemantle!’ ‘Bother Lord Ernest,’ returns the fashionable young lady in precisely the same tone as she would have used the stronger word had she been of the stronger sex. Meanwhile the gentleman is going home by train to Camden Town: a locality which he has chosen, not on account of its convenience, but because he can rent a house there for the modest sum of thirty pounds a-year. His immediate neighbours are bankers’ clerks, milliners, and petty tradesmen from the West End, but the brother of Sir Ralph Tresham of Tresham Court, and the Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks, of 120 Blue Street, Mayfair, has no alternative but to reside amongst them. He has chosen a profession in which he has signally failed, and has hampered himself with a wife and six children, when his private means are not sufficient to support himself. He fancies he can hear his children shouting even before he has gained the little terrace in which they reside. They are all so abominably strong and healthy: their voices will reach to any distance. And as he comes in sight of the familiar spot, his suspicions turn to certainties. Wilfrid and Bertie and Fred, three sturdy rascals with faces surrounded by aureoles of golden hair like angels’ crowns, but plastered with dirt like the very lowest of human creatures, are hanging on to the palings which enclose a patch of chickweed and dandelions in front of the house, and shouting offensive epithets to every passer-by. ‘Can’t you keep inside and behave yourselves? How often have I ordered you not to hang about the garden in this way?’ exclaims Roland Tresham, as he cuffs the little urchins right and left. The two youngest rush for protection to their mother, howling, whilst the eldest sobs out,— ‘Mamma said we might play here.’ ‘Then your mother’s as great a fool as you are,’ replies the father, angrily, as he strides into the house.