Roger Camm, in the meantime, had carried himself, with his roll of music in his hand, to see his betrothed at her father’s house, and was having a less delightful time of it, perhaps, than Michael pictured to himself. The Dixon _ménage_ had in no way fallen off, either in substantial internal comfort or in outward vulgarity and pretentiousness. Mrs. Dixon was even more bent upon rising in the world than her husband: he still adhered to the legitimate means by which a man may get on, by steady attention to his business and judicious retail impositions, which, when counted up at the end of the year, generally amounted to a nice little wholesale sum. Mrs. Dixon had, however, advanced in breadth of view as years had passed. She held by the doctrine that children were bound to help their parents, and she looked to Ada to help them in pushing the family fortunes. Mr. Dixon was what himself and his neighbours called a warm man, but he was cautious about bragging of his comfortableness and his competence. He looked the brag instead of speaking it. He had exalted views as to his own position and importance, but they were tempered by a strong mixture of the strictest and sternest common sense. Ada had returned to them just before she was seventeen, nearly two years ago, a finished young lady, playing the piano, singing, drawing (from anything but nature), and with a smattering of execrable French. She had a thousand airs and graces, a fine contempt for her father’s business, and a meritorious sense of shame whenever it was mentioned in her hearing, and she was exceedingly and undeniably pretty. There had been great discussions as to the part Ada was to take in the establishment when she left school. Mr. Dixon fell in with the wifely resolve that their child should never go behind the counter—he quite understood that she was neither designed nor finished for anything of the kind. But his transports in other respects fell short of those of his consort. ‘I don’t see,’ he observed, after Ada had been a few months at home, ‘that she does much that’s useful, or ever goes into the kitchen, or makes a pudding’ (infallible criterion of feminine value and worth to a certain order of masculine mind), ‘or her own clothes; and yet she often seems to me to have a deal of time on her hands that she doesn’t quite know what to do with; and as for money, she has no notion of the value of it. It’s awful.’ ‘And how should she, I should like to know?’ asked Mrs. Dixon, indignantly. ‘A child like her! She’ll learn fast enough. And then I expect her to marry well. I don’t know who ought to if she ought not.’ ‘You have to marry very high up indeed to have no need ever to think of money or housekeeping.’