Nora did know. She knew that every pound was of importance to the household, that the temporary respite caused by the legacy from Lord Risborough and by Connie’s prepayment would very soon come to an end, and that her father seemed to be more acutely aware of the position than he had yet been. Her own cleverness, and the higher education she was steadily getting for herself enabled her to appreciate, as no one else in the family could or did, her father’s delicate scholarly gifts, which had won him his reputation in Oxford and outside. But the reputation might have been higher, if so much time had not been claimed year after year by the sheer pressure of the family creditors. With every year, Nora had grown up into a fuller understanding of her father’s tragedy; a more bitter, a more indignant understanding. They might worry through; one way or another she supposed they would worry through. But her father’s strength and genius were being sacrificed. And this child of seventeen did not see how to stop it. After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she could not make up her mind to say. He put out an arm, as she stood beside his chair, and drew her to him. “Dear little Trotty Veck!” It had been his pet name for her as a child. Nora, for answer, bent her head, and kissed him. “Father”—she broke out—“I’ve got my first job!” He looked up enquiringly. “Mr. Hurst”—she named her English Literature tutor, a fellow of Marmion—“has got it for me. I’ve been doing some Norman-French with him; and there’s a German professor has asked him to get part of a romance copied that’s in the Bodleian—the only manuscript. And Mr. Hurst says he’ll coach me—I can easily do it—and I shall get ten pounds!” “Well done, Trotty Veck!” Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately. “But won’t it interfere with your work?” “Not a bit. It will help it. Father!—I’m going to earn a lot before long. If it only didn’t take such a long time to grow up!” said Nora impatiently. “One ought to be as old as one feels—and I feel quite twenty-one!” Ewen Hooper shook his head. “That’s all wrong. One should be young—and taste being young, every moment, every day that one can. I wish I’d done it—now that I’m getting old.” “You’re not old!” cried Nora. “You’re not, father! You’re not to say it!” And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips. Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him. There are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the young—the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves. But he pulled himself together.