“You see, it’s absolutely necessary that my girls should marry well,” Mrs. Friedberg said confidentially. “Business has been bad of late--there has been a slump in the trade, you know,--and Ben’s position is not what it used to be. Of course, I can’t expect them all to do as well as Adeline; but I must see that they are properly provided for. Otherwise, I am sure that there is no one I should like better for a son-in-law than you, Dave, having known your poor pa when he was a _barmitzvah_[6] boy, and you from the time you were eight days old.” David Salmon smiled good-humouredly. He was a curly-headed young fellow of about five and twenty, with nothing but his good looks and easy-going temperament to recommend him. Mrs. Friedberg would have liked him very much as a husband for Maud or Lottie, had it not been for his unfortunate aptitude for spending money as quickly as he earned it. He had just returned from South Africa, where, instead of making a fortune, as he had intended doing, he had lost the little money he had possessed. Yet he was not by any means despondent, for in the dim future there loomed forth largely, a hope--the substantial hope of an ample balance at the bankers, and immunity from certain blue documents which found their way to his address with irritating persistency. On the strength of this hope, he played bluff on board ship with the nonchalance of a millionaire, and when it came to squaring up, proffered a gold nugget as security. The nugget was not his--it had been committed to his care by Bernie Franks, and was intended as a present for Bernie’s daughter,--but it brought him luck, and, by the time he landed at Southampton, he was over £30 in pocket. He had never troubled to consider what he would have done if he had lost the nugget or part of its value. It was characteristic of David Salmon never to think of the consequences of any rash act of his. If he muddled into a scrape, he managed to muddle out of it again somehow; and always relied on his indomitable bounce to carry him through.