And meanwhile Mrs. Brill continued peevish and lachrymose, and Salvina found it more and more difficult to hide her own melancholy. One day, as she was leaving the school-premises, Sugarman the Shadchan accosted her. "Do make a beginning," he said winningly. "Only a sixteenth of a ticket. You can't lose." Sugarman still never thought of her even as a refuge for impecunious bachelors, but with that shameless pertinacity which was the secret of his success, both as British marriage-maker and continental lottery agent, he had never ceased cajoling her toward his other net. He was now destined to a success which surprised even himself. Her scrupulous conscientiousness undermined by her analysis of the Assurance System, Salvina inquired eagerly as to the prizes, and bought three whole tickets at a quarter of the price of one Assurance instalment. Sugarman made a careful note of the numbers, and so did Salvina. But it was unnecessary in her case. They were printed on her brain, graven on her heart, repeated in her prayers; they hovered luminous across her day-dreams, and if they distracted feverishly her dreams of the night, yet they tinged the school-routine pleasantly and made her mother's fretfulness endurable. They actually improved her health, and as the May sunshine warmed the earth, Salvina felt herself bourgeoning afresh, and she told herself her fears were morbid. Nevertheless there was one thing she was resolved to complete, in case she were truly doomed, and that was her mother's education in reading, so often begun, so often foiled by her mother's pertinacious subsidence into contented ignorance. Of what use even to assure Mrs. Brill's physical future, if her mind were to be left a pauper, dependent on others? How, without the magic resource of books, could she get through the long years of age, when decrepitude might confine her to the chimney-corner? Already her talk groaned with aches and pains. Since the servant had been installed, the reading lessons had dropped off and finally been discontinued. Now that Salvina persisted in continuing, she found that her mother's brain had retained nothing. Mrs. Brill had to begin again at the alphabet, and all the old routine of audacious guessing recommenced. Again a fat cow ate in a mug, for though Mrs. Brill had no head at all for corrections, she had a wonderful memory for her own mistakes, and took the whole sentence at a confident jump. It was an old friend.