"Yes," said Fanny. "I don't think it matters now that you are friends with us, and we're all the same family. Father's dividends had not come in, and he lent us the money to pay the bills." "_What_ bills?" "The butcher's bill, and Stokes the baker's bill, and the milk bill, and some others." "_Hancock_ lent you the money to pay your bills?" cried Charles, feeling like a person in a dream. "Yes, old Mr Hancock, your Mr Hancock." "But he never told me he was a friend of your father's; besides, he is _my_ solicitor." "He never saw us before this week." "Tell me all about it, and how you came to know him so intimately, and how he paid your bills," commanded Mr Bevan. There was, just here on the road, a seat dropped incontinently by the County Council; they sat upon it whilst she told her tale. "It was the other day. Father had not slept all night thinking of the action. He came into my bedroom at two in the morning to tell me that if he lost it before the House of Lords, he would take it before the Queen in Council. He had been sitting up reading 'Every Man his Own Lawyer.' Well, next morning a lot of people came asking for their money, the butcher and all those, and we hadn't any. "Father said it was all _your_ fault, and he wished he had never seen the fish stream. I was so frightened by the way he was bothering himself about everything--for, as a rule, you know he is the most easy-tempered man in the world as long as he has got his pipe. Well, a friend advised me to go privately to your lawyer and try to stop the action. So I went to Mr Hancock. "At first he seemed very stiff, and glared at me through his spectacles; but, after a while, as I told him all about ourselves, he stopped shuffling his feet, and listened with his hand to his ear as if he were deaf, and he took a smelling bottle out of a drawer of his desk and snuffed at it, and said, 'Dear me, how very extraordinary!' Then he called me his 'Poor child!' and asked me had I had any luncheon. I said 'Yes,' though I hadn't--I wasn't hungry. Well, we talked and talked, and at last he said he would come back with me home, for that our affairs were in a dreadful condition and we didn't seem to know it. He said he would come as a friend and try to forget that he was a lawyer. "Well, he came here with me. Father was upstairs in his bedroom, and I poked my head in and told him your lawyer wanted to see him in the drawing-room. "I didn't tell him it was I who had fetched him, for I knew he would simply go mad if he thought I had been meddling with the action; besides, Mr Hancock said I had better not, as he simply called as a friend. "Down came father and went into the drawing-room. I was in an awful fright, too frightened even to listen at the door. I made Susannah listen after a while, and she said they were talking about roses--I felt so relieved.