Somehow the family lived, quite how in the early days no one knew; Mrs. Polkington never spoke of it at the time, and now, mercifully, she had forgotten part, but the struggle must have been bitter. Herself disillusioned, her daughters mere children, her position insecure, and her husband not yet reduced to submission, and always prone to slip back into his old ways. But she had won through somehow, and time had given her the compensations possible to her nature. She was, by her own untiring efforts, a social factor now, even a social success; her eldest daughter was engaged to a clergyman of sufficient, if small, means, and her youngest was almost a beauty. As to the Captain, he was still there; time had not taken him away, but it had reduced him; he gave little trouble now even when Johnny Gillat came; he kept so out of the way that she had almost come to regard him as a negligible factor--which was a mistake. Both the Captain and his friend had a great respect for Mrs. Polkington, though both felt at times that she treated them a little hardly. The Captain especially felt this, but he put up with it; after all it is easier to acquiesce than to assert one's rights, and, as Johnny pointed out, it was on the whole more comfortable, in spite of horse-hair chairs, down in the basement than up in the drawing-room. There was no need to make polite conversation down here, and one might smoke, no matter how cheap the tobacco, and put one's feet up, and really Bouquet was almost as good as a fire when you once get used to it. Johnny was of a contented mind, he even looked contented sitting by the empty stove when Julia came back with the paraffin; the Captain, on the other hand, appeared to be very gloomy and unhappy; he sat silent all the time his daughter was present. As she was leaving the room Johnny tried to rouse him. "We might have a game," he suggested, looking towards a pack of cards that stuck out of a half-opened drawer. "I have nothing in the world that I can call my own," Captain Polkington answered, without moving. Mr. Gillat felt in his own lean pockets surreptitiously. "We might play for paper," he said. And as she went up-stairs Julia listened to hear their chairs scroop on the kamptulikon floor as they drew them to the table; she was surprised not to hear the sound, but she imagined the game must have been put off a little so that her father could talk over his troubles. Which, indeed, was the case, though the magnitude of those troubles she did not guess. CHAPTER II THE DEBT