"Certainly not," she said. "I have no time," and off she marched; but not before her daughter, who looked as if she wished to sink into the earth for shame, had thrown me a glance of sympathetic compassion which was a perfect balm for any wounds I might have received. And then I finished Walter Pope's poem:-- "Yet one wish I add, for the sake of those few Who in reading those lines any pleasure shall take, May I leave a good fame and a sweet-smelling name.-- Amen. Here an end of my wishes I make. CHORUS May I govern my passion with an absolute sway, And grow wiser and better, as my strength wears away, Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay." That is the song which Benjamin Franklin sang, as he informed George Whately, a thousand times when he was young; "but now," he added, at fourscore, "I find that all three of the contraries have befallen me." CHAPTER XIV THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE IS ILLUSTRATED, AND I BECOME A MONEY-LENDER One of the strangest phenomena in this life of ours, I often think, is the way in which one thing leads to another. We million mortals may live alone, each in his sea of life enisled, but our influence on each other is continuous and remarkable, and--and this is the thought that pulls one up so suddenly--very often unconscious. It is not every pebble, so to speak, that we drop into the water that makes rings: the water is often already too restless to feel it; but the widening circumference of the rings that even an idler's stone can produce are almost terrifying to think of. The facile moralist would say that this being so, people of strong or attractive personality must be very careful: but to be careful is useless. A capricious fate more powerful than the vigilant self-protectiveness of any human being is in command. I am led to these reflections by something that happened at Bemerton's in the afternoon on that summer day. It was about a quarter to three, and Mr. Bemerton was due back at three exactly, when a nice-looking schoolboy of about fourteen, with a frank and courageous countenance, walked in carrying a book. This he handed me, a little self-consciously, with a request to know if I could give him a shilling for it. It was _Hall and Knight's Algebra_, and inside was written Estabrook I. Now I am no censor, but I have certain fixed theories as to the law of _meum_ and _tuum_ and the training of boys, and also some undimmed recollections of the financial straits of my own schooldays; moreover, I liked this boy's ingenuous face. So I said, "The book is yours to sell, of course?" "Oh yes," he replied. "You bought it with your own money?" I continued Socratically. "Well, I didn't exactly buy it with my own money," he admitted. "But it's mine: that's my name in it." "A schoolbook," I said: "one that you use in your lessons?" "I shan't want it again," he replied; "I go into another form next term."