"I’m _trying_ to do accounts. I’ve been trying more or less all the evening." "More foolish you! What’s the use of accounts, anyway? If the money’s gone, it’s gone!" "Yes, but still—why, you see, Denis, we—we’ve just got to be careful now, and I must see how our money dwindles when we never spend a farthing! And I can’t get to-day right. I come threepence short." "Put it down to stamps." "I do my accounts honourably!" "I’ll help you. Read out items." "Woman with baby—india rubber—watch for boy," she enumerated glibly. "Eh? Woman with an india rubber baby and a watchful boy? How much that little lot?" She was surreptitiously trying to tear a leaf from the account-book. "Fivepence," she said, "and there was the hair ribbon for Molly—tenpence three farthings—that is one and threepence, three farthings, isn’t it?" He reached out a long arm and captured the book. On the leaf opposite the items for the day, dangling, half torn out, was a pencil sketch of Kate Kearney. "I—I forgot," said Nell. "I really didn’t know I was doing it!" "You know it’s forbidden in this book," sternly. "Plase, your Honour, I’m sorry." "You’ve got her expression splendidly. What had she been doing?" "Eating Molly’s hair-brush." "Injured innocence. It’s ripping, Nell! You’ll be a second Rosa Bonheur yet!" She sighed. He glanced at her quickly. "We’ll manage it somehow, old girl!" "So we will! I’ll sit on the pavement and draw pictures in vivid chalks, as a beginning, and with my earnings—oh, up and up I’ll go—" "To the Royal Academy—a studio in South Kensington—private exhibitions—your photograph in all the papers—interviews—’The charming young genius who has taken the artist world by storm greeted me with a delightful amiability. She afforded me a glimpse of a dimple and a half. I understand that her intimate friends are treated to three whole ones—’" "Oh, be quiet. Tell me if I’ve done the adding and subtracting right." "You have! Nell, you’re getting on. Meanwhile, we’re threepence short. Three whole pennies!" "Threepence is threepence." He looked surprised. "Are you sure?" "I _can’t_ think what it is." "Account-book?" he suggested blandly. On the occasion of Nell’s first essay at accounts, she had worried and fought and wrestled over a missing sixpence, till Sheila Pat brilliantly bethought her of the account-book, price sixpence. Thereafter the account-book was a family joke. "_Chestnuts_!" said Denis, in solemn tone. "Oh, you jewel! That’s it. Now I’m beautifully right." She scribbled it down. He picked up a piece of stick, smooth and round. Nell glanced at it and laughed. "That’s Molly’s! She’s been sitting with a bit of hair rolled round it all the evening!" It was the ambition of Molly’s life to have waving hair like Nell’s. Secretly she tried many ways to make it curl. Pencils, pens, bits of stick, all were requisitioned in guilty secrecy. "Now tell me about your evening, Denis. Who was there?"