"What time do you get up?" "Half-past seven." "Then," said Fanny, laughing, "you don't set them--I mean they set you the example, for they are up before you." "I spoke figuratively," said Miss Hancock rather stiffly, and eyeing the handmaiden who had just appeared at the door to remove the things. "Give the fish to the cats, Susannah," said her mistress, "and be sure to take the bones out; one nearly choked," she said, resuming her conversation with her visitor, "the other morning." "Hum!" said Miss Hancock, unenthusiastic on the subject of choking cats. "Do you always feed your animals on--good food?" "Yes, of course." "You are very young, and, of course, it is no affair of mine, but I think in housekeeping--having first of all regard to waste--one ought to consider how many poor people are starving. I send all my scraps to the St Mark's Refuge Home, an excellent institution." "I used to give a lot of food away," said Fanny, "but I found it didn't pay, people didn't want it. We had a barrel of beer that no one drank, so I gave a tramp a jugful once, and he made a mark somewhere on the house, and after that twenty or thirty tramps a day called. We couldn't find the mark, so father had to have the whole lower part of the house lime-washed, and the gate pillars. After that he said no more food was to be given away, or beer." "There are poor and poor. To give beer to a tramp is in my opinion a distinctly wicked act; it is simply feeding the flames of drunkenness, as Mr Bulders says. You have heard of Mr Bulders?" "N--no." "I must introduce you. I hope you will like him, he is a great friend of ours. Your Christian name is Fanny, I believe. May I call you Fanny?" "Yes," said Fanny. "How queer it is, nobody knows me for--I mean, everybody always asks me that before I have known them for more----" "Everybody?" "Yes." "Gentlemen, my dear child, surely not?" "Yes, they do." Miss Hancock said nothing, but sat for a moment in silence gloating over the girl before her. Here was a gold-mine of pure correction--the metaphor is mixed perhaps, but you will understand it. Then she said: "And do you permit it?" "Oh, _I_ don't care." "But I fancy, your father----" Miss Hancock paused. "Oh, father doesn't mind; every one has called me Fanny since I was so high." "Yes, but, my dear girl, you are no longer a _child_. Fathers are indulgent, and sometimes blind to what the world thinks; consider, when you come to marry, when you come to have a husband----" "Oh, I hope it'll be a long time before I come to that," said Fanny, in a tone of voice as if general service or the workhouse were the topic of discussion. Miss Hancock took a rather deep inspiration, and was dumb for a moment. "I understood my brother to say that he had written to you on a subject touching your welfare and his happiness?"