limits that he has no regret at not passing them. But yet in his eyes a gentleman was so grand a thing,--a being so infinitely superior to himself,--that, loving his daughter above anything else, he did think that he could die happy if he could see her married into a station so exalted. There was a humility in this as regarded himself and an affection for his child which were admirable. The reader will think that he might at any rate have done better than to pitch upon such a one as Ralph Newton; but then the reader hardly knows Ralph Newton as yet, and cannot at all realise the difficulty which poor Mr. Neefit experienced in coming across any gentleman in such a fashion as to be able to commence his operations. It is hardly open to a tradesman to ask a young man home to his house when measuring him from the hip to the knee. Neefit had heard of many cases in which gentlemen of money had married the daughters of commercial men, and he knew that the thing was to be done. Money, which spent in other directions seemed to be nearly useless to him, might be used beneficially in this way. But how was he to set about it? Polly Neefit was as pretty a girl as you shall wish to see, and he knew that she was pretty. But, if he didn't take care, the good-looking young gasfitter, next door to him down at Hendon, would have his Polly before he knew where he was. Or, worse still, as he thought, there was that mad son of his old friend Moggs, the bootmaker, Ontario Moggs as he had been christened by a Canadian godfather, with whom Polly had condescended already to hold something of a flirtation. He could not advertise for a genteel lover. What could he do? Then Ralph Newton made his way down to the Hendon villa,--asking for money. What should have induced Mr. Newton to come to him for money he could not guess;--but he did know that, of all the young men who came into his back shop to be measured, there was no one whose looks and manners and cheery voice had created so strong a feeling of pleasantness as had those of Mr. Ralph Newton. Mr. Neefit could not analyse it, but there was a kind of sunshine about the young man which would have made him very unwilling to press hard for payment, or to stop the supply of breeches. He had taken a liking to Ralph, and found himself thinking about the young man in his journeys between Hendon and Conduit Street. Was not this the sort of gentleman that would suit his daughter? Neefit wanted no one to tell him that Ralph Newton was a gentleman,--what he meant by a gentleman,--and that Wallop the stockbroker was not. Wallop the stockbroker spoke of himself as though he was a very fine fellow indeed; but to the thinking of Mr. Neefit, Ontario Moggs was more like a gentleman than Mr. Wallop. He had feared much as to his daughter, both in reference to the handsome gasfitter and to Ontario Moggs, but since that second tea-drinking he had hoped that his daughter's eyes were opened.