"I sent Susannah in with wine, and Mr Hancock stayed to supper. After supper they had cigars and punch, and I played to them on the piano, and father sang Irish songs, and Mr Hancock told us awfully funny stories all about the law, and said he was a bachelor and envied father because he had a daughter like me. "Then he talked about our affairs, and said he would require more punch before he could understand them; so he had more punch, and father showed him the housekeeping books, and he looked over them reading them upside down and every way. Then he wrote out a cheque to pay the books, with one eye shut, whilst father wrote out bills, you know, to pay the cheque, and then he kissed me and said good-bye to father and went away crying." "But," cried Charles, utterly astounded at this artless revelation of another man's folly, "old Hancock never made a joke in his life--at least to _me_--and he's an awful old skinflint and never lent any man a penny, so they say." "He made lots of jokes that night, anyhow," said Fanny, "and lent father over twenty pounds, too; and only yesterday a great bunch of hothouse flowers came from Covent Garden with his card for me." "Old fool!" said Charles. "He is not an old fool, he's a dear old man, and I love him. Come on, or the shops will be closed." "You seem to love everything," said Mr Bevan in a rather stiff tone, as they meandered along near now to the street where shops were. "I do--at least everything I don't hate." "Whom do you hate?" "No one just now. I never hate people for long, it is too much trouble. I used to hate you before I knew you. I thought you were a man with a black beard; you see I hadn't seen you." "But, why on earth did you think I had a black beard?" "_I_ don't know. I suppose it was because I hate black beards." "So you don't hate me?" "No, _indeed_." "And as every one you don't hate, you---- I say, what a splendid evening this is! it is just like Italy. I mean, it reminds me of Italy." "And here are the shops at last," said Fanny, as if the shops had been travelling to them and had only just arrived. She stopped at a stationer's window. "I want to get some envelopes. Come in, won't you?" She bought a packet of envelopes for fourpence. Charles turned away to look at some of the gaudily-bound Kebles, Byrons, and Scotts so dear to the middle-class heart, and before he could turn again she had bought a little prayer-book with a cross on it for a shilling. The shopman was besetting her with a new invention in birthday cards when Charles broke the spell by touching her elbow with the head of his walking stick. "Don't you think," said he when they were safely in the street, "it is a mistake buying prayer-books, these shop-keepers are such awful swindlers?" "I bought it for Susannah," explained Fanny. "It's a little present for her after the way James has gone on. Look at this dear monkey."