*?-
 
 (JOOD-BYE, DKAR LITTLE BRIDE," SHE SAID TO POLLY. Pare l6l
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY 
 
 THE STORY OF A SOCIAL 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STRANGE WINTER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'THE MONEY SENSE," " HEART AND SWORD," BOOTLES* BABY/ 
 "THE TRUTH-TELLERS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers
 
 COPYRIGHT, igoo. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 COPYRIGHT, igoo, 
 
 BY 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 The Sinks Family.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE BEGINNING OF BINKS AND SONS ... 5 
 
 II. ASTLEY CRESCENT ...... 19 
 
 III. TED'S WIFE 32 
 
 IV. ROSEDALE 47 
 
 V. NEW-FANGLED WAYS ...... 61 
 
 VI. HINTS 77 
 
 VII. A GOOD START 92 
 
 VIII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW . . e . 107 
 
 IX. THE HIGHER DEPORTMENT 122 
 
 X. THE SHADOW OF A CHANGE .... 136 
 
 XI. THE WEDDING ....... 150 
 
 XII. DOVE HALL 164 
 
 XIII. THE TOWERS ........ 179 
 
 XIV. REMEMBER ........ 194 
 
 XV. THE REIGN OF SIMPLICITY 308 
 
 XVI. TENDER-EYED LEAH . 022 
 
 2138973
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF BINKS AND SONS. 
 " One man's meat is another man's poison ! " 
 
 I MAY as well own up to the truth, first as 
 last, and admit that I was always of an ambitious 
 turn. I never can see, myself, why ambition 
 should be counted (as most people count it in 
 others) as one of the seven deadly sins. It is the 
 natural instinct of every human being; it is the 
 word which we use when we are writing essays, 
 to express, what, in everyday conversation, we 
 call " getting on." Why shouldn't people try 
 to get on? My dear mother always used to say,
 
 6 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 when the people at our chapel persisted in calling 
 her worldly : " Well, you may call me worldly if 
 you like, but it's my opinion that we was sent 
 here to do our duty in this world, as well as to 
 prepare us for a better. If I goes to chapel," she 
 used to say, " five nights out of the week, I don't 
 say I shouldn't enjoy myself above a bit, and 
 hear all the latest scandal that's going on. But I 
 couldn't keep my husband's clothes tidy, nor the 
 potatoes out of my children's stockings. And my 
 Joe, he says : ' You're better off here, Old Girl, 
 setting at your sewing, and me a-reading of the 
 noospaper to you, than you would be set in that 
 there chapel a-listening to all the elders a-ranting 
 about the way to save your soul, and a-making 
 all the silly women that goes to hear 'em that 
 dazzled with the glory of Christ, that they can't 
 see to do the every day duty the Lord has put into 
 their very 'ands.' " " Seems to me," father used 
 to say, " that them elders'll have a good deal to
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 7 
 
 answer to when we come to reckoning up at the 
 end. I never had much opinion of elders 
 they've mostly been off color since the time of 
 Susanna." 
 
 Now, when I look back from where I am now, 
 I often think that my father and mother were 
 out of the common run father in judging for 
 himself and, though he was a regular chapel- 
 goer and paid his sittings like clock-work, taking 
 his religion with a grain of common sense; and 
 mother in sticking to him and us, and making us 
 of more daily importance than her minister and 
 her chapel. 
 
 Father was always ambitious. His early ex- 
 istence had been checkered ; if all mother let slip 
 and all our relations let fly was true, his youth 
 must have been as much a mixture of good luck 
 and bad as a chessboard is of black and white 
 squares. I believe he had tried most things, and 
 then he met with mother, who had been years
 
 8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 and years in service with an old lady of title, at 
 whose death she had come into a nice little leg- 
 acy, which, with her savings and pickings, made 
 her quite a catch. Mother was well turned 
 thirty when old Lady Anna died, but she had ad- 
 mirers in plenty, and was able to pick and choose 
 as she would. And as father was a fine figure 
 of a man, and had a very taking kind of way 
 with him, he carried the day, and they were 
 married. 
 
 At that time he was employed on a milk-walk, 
 which, truth to tell, was how he made mother's 
 acquaintance. Of course, after they were mar- 
 ried, as mother was quite well off, he was not 
 going to stop under a master when he might be 
 on his own. So he bought a milk-walk not a hun- 
 dred miles from where he had been employed, 
 and they settled down comfortably to everyday 
 life. 
 
 As I said, father was always ambitious, and he
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 9 
 
 got on ! Not but what de deserved to do so ; for, 
 if mother had been a lucky bird to him in giving 
 him the capital necessary to start with, he was, 
 first and last, an uncommon good husband to her. 
 Never the inside of a public-house saw him, and 
 when he had finished his work he always spent 
 his evenings quietly with mother in the parlor 
 behind the shop. I remember once when I was 
 very little, hearing a gentleman say to father 
 with a sneer: 
 
 "Oh, well, if you're tied to your wife's apron- 
 string, it's no use asking you to come, I suppose." 
 
 " I may be tied to my missis's apron-string," I 
 heard father say in reply ; " and if I am, I tied the 
 knot myself. When I untie it, it'll be for some 
 one that interests me more than she does, and I've 
 got to find her or him first. Good day to you." 
 
 I remember so well how mother gave a sort of 
 choke in her throat, and how she ran into the 
 shop as soon as the tempter had gone, and caught
 
 io THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 hold of father behind the big shining milk-cans 
 and the bushy plants which stood in a row along 
 the counter. 
 
 " Oh, Binks ! " she cried. " Oh, Binks ! " 
 
 There, don't take on, Old Girl," he said in 
 his rough, kind way. " I gets many temptations 
 to join clubs and such like; but as long as you 
 make 'ome to me what you do, it's easy to say, 
 * Get thee behind me, Satan.' " 
 
 We did not stay long in that house, which was 
 the second business that father had worked up. 
 It wasn't his way to grub along from hand to 
 mouth, making himself contented and happy with 
 a fair profit, and laying by nothing for the 
 future. No; his idea was to put all his energies 
 into his " walk " until he had worked it up into 
 a thoroughly good connection, and then to sell it 
 for a good price and start fresh on a new lay. 
 
 I don't know whether the same thing has even 
 struck you, but a milk-walk isn't the most pleas-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. n 
 
 ant line a married couple can take up. Somehow, 
 it often seems to cause quarrels, and then the hus- 
 bands get led astray and the wives get mad and 
 jealous, and, after that, everything seems to go 
 wrong with them. I've always thought that go- 
 ing round seeing so many different servants had 
 a good deal to do with it. You see, every one of 
 them has a civil " good morning " for the milk- 
 man, particularly when he has a taking way, and 
 they, perhaps, don't get out from one week's end 
 to another. Then, if matters are not very smooth 
 at home, and the poor man is always torn be- 
 tween his duty to a snappy wife and the pleasure 
 of chatting to a smiling, pleasant-spoken cook, 
 it's as likely as not that things will soon come to 
 such a pass that the milk-walk is in the market 
 and going cheap. 
 
 It was by taking advantage of these upsets that 
 father first began to get on. He sold his own 
 snug, flourishing business and bought one where
 
 i2 THE SINKS FAMILY. 
 
 the husband had gone off with a young woman in 
 the very next street, leaving his wife behind to 
 do as she liked with the business, by way of pro- 
 viding for her. 
 
 Now, it happened in this case that the wife had 
 been in the dressmaking, and knew no more of 
 how to run a milk-walk that she did of how to 
 write stories in the Family Herald. So she was 
 glad to dispose of the fittings and connection to 
 father for a sum down that would enable her to 
 start again at her own trade. 
 
 It was this business that I remember. I think 
 we lived in that house for about three years. I 
 don't remember going there, but I do remember, 
 when I was about six years old, father coming 
 in one evening just at tea-time and clapping his 
 hand down on mother's back. 
 
 " Old Girl," he said, " I've sold the business." 
 
 " Lor', Binks, you don't say so ! " she cried, 
 looking half frightened.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 13 
 
 " But I do. I've got to go through the books 
 and all that, but the actual bargain's made, and 
 I've put my 'and to it." 
 
 " A good price, Binks ? " she asked. 
 
 " Four 'underd and fifty," he replied. 
 
 " That's a good price, Binks," said mother ; 
 then added in a sort of fright : " Not the furni- 
 ture, Binks?" i 
 
 " Nothing inside of them two doors," said my 
 father, pointing to the door which led to the shop 
 and then to the door which led to the yard. 
 
 They talked their plans over, and father told 
 her how he had to jump at the offer or leave 
 it, as the incomer wanted to be married at once, 
 and was very keen on having a home of his own 
 to bring his wife straight to. So, for the next 
 week or two, we were all in a bustle and a scrim- 
 mage, and mother told everybody who came in 
 that she felt like being torn up by the roots and
 
 i 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 that she had quite thought father had settled 
 down at Orpington Road for good and all. 
 
 " My husband is such an ambitious man, mad- 
 am," she explained to one lady who came in an 
 excellent customer, too, she was, that had cream 
 every Sunday, and on her " at home " days as 
 well "never satisfied to sit down and take life 
 easy; always pressing onward." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Binks, I'm sorry you're leaving 
 the neighborhood," said the lady. " But we are 
 not thinking of staying much longer ourselves, so 
 we should have had to part very soon. As to Mr. 
 Binks being ambitious, so much the better for 
 him and for you. I believe in ambitious men. 
 They never waste their lives. 
 
 A very few days after this we left Orpington 
 Road forever. To us children the very idea of 
 moving was delightful. All the house was turaed 
 topsy-turvy, and the last daj we had to eat our
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 15 
 
 dinner off a shelf in the kitchen. Even then we 
 didn't exactly know where we were going, and 
 mother went about packing busily, with alter- 
 nately a joke and a text on her lips. 
 
 At last when it was getting near tea-time, 
 father came bustling in. 
 
 " Old Girl," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, 
 " I've found a place, tip-top, and no mistake 
 about it. A shop like a palace, a fine, roomy 
 house, and the neighborhood Ai. It'll be a real 
 treat working up the connection." 
 
 "And are we going in to-morrow?" asked 
 mother. 
 
 " No. We can store our things in the outbuild- 
 ings, but the shop must be properly fitted; and 
 we had better have the house done while we're 
 about it. But you needn't look so scared, Old 
 Girl; I've thought it all out. We'll see the 
 things safely in, and then we'll go down to Mar- 
 gate for a week and take a little holiday. I can
 
 1 6 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 run up and down and see to the fittings and such 
 like." 
 
 Mother gave a long sort of sigh. 
 
 " Binks," she said, " a holiday will do us all 
 good. We've worked hard, you and me, since we 
 was married, and it's a poor heart that never re- 
 joices. But what do you mean about fittings? 
 Isn't the shop fitted already ? " 
 
 Father then unfolded all his plans. 
 
 " Old Girl," he said, " I haven't found a going 
 concern anyhow to my taste. Buying a connec- 
 tion is all very well, but you've got to take the 
 drawbacks along with the advantages. I 'ad to 
 buy this business r'cause why? That we hadn't 
 money enough to keep going on while I 
 worked up a connection. Now all that's differ- 
 ent. I've taken a splendid shop in a fine neigh- 
 borhood bordering on the park, and I'm going to 
 launch out and cut a dash. Best of milk and 
 other dairy produce, and a fine shop fitted with
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 17 
 
 all the latest ideas, to say nothing of a good busi- 
 ness 'ead and a civil tongue to manage, them's 
 enough to make any concern a going concern." 
 
 " And there isn't a business near by ? " said 
 mother. 
 
 " Not within three streets," he returned, tri- 
 umphantly. 
 
 My mother gave another sigh. 
 
 " Well, Binks, she said, " you're not one to put 
 your hand to the plow and look back. I'm sure, 
 if you lay your mind to it, that you'll carry it 
 through and succeed in the end. For myself, I 
 haven't the go and dash that you have, and I 
 should have set down here quite content to the 
 end of my days. But," she went on, " if I haven't 
 got your go, Binks, I've never been, and I never 
 mean to be, a drag on you; so I'm with you, 
 Binks, in whatever you think best to do." 
 
 " Old Girl," said father, in a queer, rough sort 
 of voice, " if you weren't just what you are, I
 
 x8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 shouldn't be any good to any one. It was you 
 made me what I am ; it was you give me some- 
 thing to work for ; it was through you I done it 
 all. I don't forget you might have choose differ- 
 ently, but you chose me, Old Girl, and you trusted 
 me with your money, and I want to prove myself 
 worthy of it and you."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 ASTLEY CRESCENT. 
 
 " It's a poor heart that never rejoices ! " 
 
 AFTER our holiday at Margate we went back to 
 the new house. Father had been down several 
 times during our stay, for the week had stretched 
 itself into a fortnight, but he had spent most of 
 the time in London, looking after the new 
 premises. 
 
 " It's no partic'lar holiday to me loafing about 
 doing nothing," he remarked to mother, when he 
 was going back the first time after three days by 
 the sea. "I'm not like the kids, that can take 
 their pleasure a-grubbing in the sand and a-lis- 
 tening to the niggers. I'm uneasy-like. My 
 heart's up there with the new business, and it's
 
 20 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 change enough for me to be seeing after them fit- 
 tings instead of going my rounds with the cart. I 
 shan't come down again till Saturday afternoon. 
 
 I've often thought since, when thinking over 
 the past, and taking a lesson from what it teaches, 
 that the reason why father got on, hand-over-fist 
 as he did, was because he put every bit of himself 
 into what he was about. He made his business 
 his work and his play, too. I admired him for 
 it, and I sympathize with it too, for, of all us, 
 I have most of father's nature in me; for I'm 
 like that, too. I've no patience with people that 
 half do things, and get tired midway when 
 they've set out on a certain course. Perhaps one 
 can't quite see the end of the journey, but it's 
 paltry to sit down and cry off just because the 
 future looks a bit dark, and things don't all pan 
 out just as easy as we want them to. 
 
 I don't think, myself, that father ever knew 
 what it was to be daunted. The new shop fairly
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 21 
 
 took our breath away when we drove up to the 
 door in a cab on our return from Margate. Our 
 Polly pinched me hard in her excitement. 
 
 "Look, look, Anna Maria ! " she cried, " there it 
 
 is all shining pails and big windows ! Oh, my ! " 
 
 It was a shop ! The walls were all blue and 
 
 white tiles, and the counters were white marble, 
 
 .with brass edges that shone like gold. There 
 
 were great green plants in big blue vases, and 
 
 i 
 
 in each great window were great glass globes 
 
 with lots of goldfish in them, and at the back of 
 each was stood a great gilt cow. At the back 
 of the shop was a glass counting-house, with a 
 window to shut up and down, and the floor was 
 all dark-blue tiles. I had never seen such a pal- 
 ace of a place before, and I stood on the blue 
 tiles and turned myself round and round as if I 
 were in a dream. 
 
 " Is this ours ? " I asked, feeling rather fright- 
 ened than otherwise.
 
 si2 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 "Every bit ours," said father, stooping 'down 
 to kiss me. 
 
 It is wonderful how easy we get used to 
 grandeur. When a few weeks had gone by, Polly 
 and I were no more scared by our grand new 
 shop than we had been by our old one in Orping- 
 ton Road. At first we used to tip-toe across the 
 tiled floor, as if our little shoes could hurt it; 
 but very soon we played about among all the 
 grandeur quite naturally, and never gave a 
 thought to it. At that time mother always 
 dressed us in large pinafores of bright blue 
 zephyr, and as both Polly and me were very fair, 
 and she always kept us without spot or speck, the 
 customers took a great deal of notice of us. I 
 remember one lady in particular, who came to 
 taste the milk, telling mother that she had to be 
 very careful, as her children were very delicate, 
 always ailing with something or other. 
 
 Mother took very high ground. " I'm sure,
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 23 
 
 madam," she said and let me say here that 
 mother had a very grand sort of manner " that 
 children's health depends a great deal on what 
 dairy they are supplied from. There's a deal of 
 fuss made about oysters, but the harm oysters do 
 is not to be spoken of in the same breath with the 
 harm done by poor milk. Very few people eat 
 oysters, to begin with, but every one uses milk. 
 Most dairies aren't clean enough, and many 
 dairymen haven't the least notion where the milk 
 they sell comes from." 
 
 " Then you keep your own cows, Mrs. Mrs. 
 Binks?" 
 
 " We do, madam, but only for a very few del- 
 icate babies. But we get our milk direct from 
 three large milk-farms, and my husband employs 
 a veterinary surgeon to see the animals twice a 
 week, and twice a week he has his report as to 
 whether all this is right."
 
 24 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 "And if it isn't?" the lady asked. 
 
 " If a single animal ails the least thing it is 
 separated at once from the rest, and the milk is 
 simply taken away and destroyed. It is not even 
 given to the pigs. My husband, madam, is not 
 a man who simply buys so many cans of milk and 
 sells it again at a profit. He thinks out every 
 turn of his business, and takes every precaution 
 against the least thing going wrong." 
 
 At this moment the lady happened to notice 
 Polly and me as we stood listening. " Are these 
 your little girls, Mrs. Binks ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, madam," said mother, laying a hand on 
 Polly's golden curls, " and though I say it, that 
 shouldn't, I think they speak very well for the 
 quality of milk they drink." 
 
 " They do, indeed," said the lady, looking down 
 at us with a smile. 
 
 After that, Polly and me were in the shop more
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 25 
 
 than ever. We went to school, of course, but be- 
 tween school-hours mother always encouraged us 
 to be in the shop with her. 
 
 " If they are at school, Binks," she said to 
 father, " why, I know where they are, and what 
 they're doing; and if they're in the shop I know 
 what they're after, for I can see them all the 
 time. But if they're out in the yard among the 
 lads, or even in the kitchen along of the servants, 
 they may be picking up habits that they'll never 
 be able to cast. And they're no detriment to the 
 business, Binks, while they've got such roses as 
 they have." 
 
 " As my Lady Countess of Dreddingham is 
 proof," said my father, chuckling. 
 
 "That's right," said mother. " I'm sure, Binks, 
 you might have knocked me down with a feather 
 when she gave me her card for the address, and 
 me been talking to her as plain and bold as you 
 please. But the Countess of Dreddingham's been
 
 26 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 a rare good customer to us, and has spoke for us 
 right and left." 
 
 It was as mother truly said. When the anx- 
 ious, sweet-voiced lady who was so full of trouble 
 for her delicate children turned out to be a real 
 countess, and a very influential one at that, the 
 business increased at such a rate that mother had 
 to give up all her work indoors, and to keep her- 
 self entirely free for the shop. And, as she 
 would have things kept right up to the mark, so 
 that father should always have a comfortable 
 home and a thorough good dinner, she kept a 
 good cook and a capable housemaid. 
 
 " None of your untrained slovens for me," she 
 used to say. " I give good wages and keep a 
 good table, and I know exactly what I want. 
 That's nothing unreasonable a fair day's work 
 done without a misses dodging all day long at 
 their heels. If the girls know their work and can
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 27 
 
 do it, well and good ; if they can't, or won't, out 
 they go." 
 
 Then she began to find the sewing get beyond 
 her. 
 
 " Binks," she said to father one day, " I'm go- 
 ing to get a mother's help." 
 
 " All right, Old Girl," said father. 
 
 " I can't keep up with the sewing," mother ex- 
 claimed. " Time was when I could get through 
 a good bit while I was minding the shop; but, 
 now that the business has got so large, I haven't 
 a minute to spare from the books." 
 
 " You wouldn't like a reg'lar bookkeeper, Old 
 Lady ? " said father. " The business'll well stand 
 it, you know." 
 
 " No, Binks, not yet awhile. While I've got 
 my hand on it I know exactly where we're going, 
 without you having to bother your head about 
 it. If we get a young lady for the books, she 
 mightn't understand all the customers' little fads
 
 28 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 as I do. I'd rather go on as we are for a bit, and 
 have a bit more help in the house, which won't 
 cost near as much." 
 
 " Right you are ! " said father, cheerfully. 
 
 So several years went by, and still we were 
 living in the house in Astley Crescent. Mother 
 always said that she shouldn't let herself get 
 really attached to the place, although she had a 
 handsome drawing-room and a piano, and Polly 
 and me were learning music, and used to play to 
 mother and father in the evenings and on Sun- 
 days. 
 
 " If I hold it with a light hand," she said more 
 than once, " I shan't feel the wrench when your 
 father takes it into his head that we shall do bet- 
 ter elsewhere." 
 
 But father never did take that idea no; but 
 he added several other businesses to ours, and he 
 quite gave up going out with the milk. But then 
 he bought a very smart pony and cart, and spent
 
 .THE BINKS FAMILY. 29 
 
 all his time going from one business to another, 
 seeing to this, that and the other. And then, as 
 his connection grew and grew, so did he become 
 sole consumer of the various milk-farms where 
 he dealt ; and also he started a dairy farm of his 
 own a few miles down in Bucks, and sometimes 
 he used to take one or other of us with him when 
 he went to see how things were going on there. 
 
 He had altered very much by this time, father 
 had. I can remember when he always wore light 
 blue-gray clothes in winter and white drill in 
 summer; and latterly, at Astley Crescent, he 
 used to have a clean suit on every day of his life 
 when the weather was hot. Then, when he gave 
 up going the rounds, he began to wear darker 
 clothes, and then to have black ones like a gen- 
 tleman. I can tell you he used to look as smart 
 as smart when he drove away from the door in a 
 black frock coat and a high hat, with his dogskin 
 driving gloves, and his clean handkerchief just
 
 30 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 showing out of his breast-pocket. But though he 
 was altered outwardly, father was just the same 
 in himself a plain, bluff, hearty, down-right sort 
 of man with no nonsense about him, devoted to 
 mother, and going straight on his own road, 
 turning neither to right nor left for any man or 
 anything. 
 
 Then, when I was about fifteen, a great change 
 came into our lives. As usual, father sprung it 
 on mother as a regular surprise. 
 
 " Old Lady," he said one day, just when we 
 were finishing supper, " I've been thinking out 
 things a bit, and I think it's about time we made 
 a change." 
 
 "As how?" said mother. 
 
 " Well," said he, " it seems to me we've been 
 'ere long enough. It's done us very well, 'as 
 Astley Crescent, and I've nothing to say again' 
 it, but it's time you chucked business and took 
 your ease, as I do."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 31 
 
 " I'm sure you don't, Binks," mother cried, in- 
 dignantly. 
 
 "Well, in a way, I don't, returned he, laugh- 
 ing. "But all the same, it's pleasanter work 
 driving round in a smart pony-cart, just bossing 
 things, than it is driving round with the milk- 
 cans, no matter how well shined they be. You've 
 got a gold watch, Old Lady, and a sealskin 
 jacket, it's true ; but it's high time you 'ad a villa 
 and a conservatory, and lived like a lady, instead 
 of being tied by the leg to the business as you 
 are now. D' ye see ? " 
 
 " I'm contented enough," began mother ; when 
 he broke in 
 
 " Aye, you're as good as gold ; but I'm not 
 contented to see you a-slaving 'ere any longer. 
 We're worth a tidy penny now, Old Lady. We're 
 warm people ; and I want you to enjoy yourself 
 in your way as I do in mine."
 
 3* THE BINKS FAMILY, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 TED'S WIFE. 
 
 WE did not hurry way from Astley Crescent, 
 for, as father said, going from business into pri- 
 vate life was a far more serious step than merely 
 changing from one shop to another. But he kept 
 his eyes open, and when he heard of a nice prop- 
 erty going, he would drive over at once and see 
 it. Time and again this happened, but there was 
 always something that turned him against each 
 fresh house that he saw. Either it was too near 
 water or a railway ran in close proximity, or the 
 drainage was doubtful, or the set of the house 
 was wrong. More than once he declared tJiat 
 he would give up all idea of finding a suburban 
 house to his taste, and that it would be best to 
 look out for a nice, cheerful house in town. But
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 33 
 
 mother, who had been born and brought up in the 
 country, longed so for something of a country 
 life that he started off on his search yet once 
 again. 
 
 This time he went a little farther out, and at 
 last he met with just what he wanted at Nor- 
 wood, taking Rosedale for one year, with the 
 option of buying at a certain price at the end of 
 the time. 
 
 Then he began to see that he had made a mis- 
 take. 
 
 " Old Lady," he said to mother, when they had 
 just come in from a long day spent at a great 
 furniture shop in the West End, "I've blundered 
 this bit of business." 
 
 " You have ? " said mother in surprise. Mother 
 had a great idea of father's business capacity. 
 
 " I have that same," he said. " See here ! The 
 landlord allows so much for decorating we 
 spend three times as much, and, if we leave at the
 
 34 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 end of the year, all our money is clean chucked 
 away. I'll go down and clinch the bargain right 
 away, and then we can spend what we like on 
 the place without feeling that it's a waste." 
 
 " And if we don't like it ? " suggested mother. 
 
 14 Then we can look out for a place we shall 
 like, and we shall 'ave an extra bit of house prop- 
 erty on our 'ands," said he. 
 
 He was as good as his word, and went straight 
 away to see the owner of Rosedale, and arrange 
 to buy it at once instead of waiting the year. That 
 was the best of father; when he once made up 
 his mind there was no shilly-shallying, for with 
 him to decide was to do. Before a week had gone 
 by Rosedale belonged to us, and he and mother 
 went happily on with arrangements for furnish- 
 ing and getting it ready for occupation. 
 
 They decided to take nothing away from Ast- 
 ley Crescent. For one thing, my eldest brother, 
 now three and twenty, was just going to be
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 35 
 
 married, and would have the house to live in. 
 As father said, everything was suited to the 
 house and to the business; and though he was 
 marrying a girl with a tidy fortune, she was sen- 
 sible and saw things in the same light that we 
 did. 
 
 " And by and by," said father, " when our Ted 
 gets on a bit, he'll be able to buy you a villa, and 
 to furnish it new for you." 
 
 " Well, as to that, Mr. Binks," said Rosalind, 
 with a laugh, " I'm not so desperately keen on a 
 villa in the suburbs. I've lived in the suburbs all 
 my life, and Astley Crescent will make a nice 
 change for me. Besides, I'd rather be close at 
 hand and see Ted have his meals comfortable 
 than sit in state in a villa, with a rush to catch 
 the train of a morning and no one to speak to till 
 he came home at night, too tired out to throw a 
 word at a dog, like pa is. No ! Astley Crescent 
 will do me very well, and I'm very much obliged
 
 36 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 to you and Ted's ma for turning out to make 
 room for us." 
 
 At this our Ted looked round with a proud 
 smile, and mother gave a sort of choke, as she 
 always did when she was upset; and father, he 
 jumped up and kissed Rosalind heartily as she 
 stood before the fire. 
 
 " You're the very girl for our Ted," he ex- 
 claimed. " God bless you, my dear ; my lad's 
 going to be as lucky as I've been ; " and then he 
 turned away, and, flourishing out his great silk 
 handkerchief, he blew his nose as if he had half 
 a dozen colds rolled into one. 
 
 As for mother, she fairly sobbed. 
 
 " Yes, you're the girl for Ted," she cried. " I 
 only hope you'll be as happy in his house as I've 
 been, and be as blessed in your husband as I've 
 been and am in mine. Our Ted will never have 
 to work as his father's done, because his way has 
 been made easy. If the sins of the fathers are
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 37 
 
 visited on the children, so do the children reap 
 the advantages of their parents having been God- 
 fearing and loving with one another. The law of 
 the Lord tells both far good and for evil, and 
 our Ted is able to marry to a fine business, and to 
 begin almost where we are leaving off." 
 
 I began to understand why our Ted was so 
 taken up with Rosalind Browne. She was no 
 particular beauty just a tall, fine-grown girl, 
 with a pert nose, a wide mouth and a glinting 
 eye. But she had a heart, too, for she set herself 
 down on the arm of mother's chair and put her 
 arm round her shoulders. 
 
 " There, don't take on, ma, dear," she said, 
 smoothing mother's hair with her other hand. 
 " I know what you must feel like giving up the 
 house you've lived in so long, to a girl you aren't 
 quite sure of. But it'll be all right, ma, dear. I 
 love Ted, and Ted loves me ; and you must try to
 
 38 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 think of me as if I was one of your own kids and 
 not like a ma-in-law at all." 
 
 " My dear girl," sobbed mother " my dear, 
 dear girl ! " 
 
 " I've no ma of my own to go to," Rosalind 
 wnt on presently, " and there'll be many a little 
 thing I shall want your help in. So you must be 
 a real ma to me, and I'll try to be as much to you 
 as Ted is. And whenever you want to come to 
 town for a bit, you'll remember that this is your 
 home as well as mine." 
 
 At this father blew his nose again like a trum- 
 pet, and Ted looked as if he was going to cry. 
 But mother could always conquer her feelings, 
 and she pulled herself up sharp, and, turning 
 round, kissed her son's intended bride very 
 heartily. 
 
 " No, my dear, dear girl," she said ; " I shall 
 never forget it. And I want you to remember
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 39 
 
 this, the first bit of advice I have ever given you. 
 This is to be your home, my dear, and you must 
 be its mistress, you, and you alone. Never give 
 up that position for an hour to any other woman, 
 not even to me; or, as some people would say, 
 least of all to me. We shall come, all of us, dear 
 girl, but only when we are sure that it is quite 
 convenient to you and Ted." 
 
 " Dear ma," said Rosalind, " you may be quite 
 sure you'll always find it convenient to me and 
 Ted." 
 
 That was how Rosalind Browne first began to 
 call our mother anything but Mrs. Binks. 
 
 " I don't wonder Ted's so mashed on her as he 
 is," said Polly to me. " She isn't pretty, but 
 she's got such a way with her, and she's so 
 stylish. The way she says ' ma ' is so different 
 to plain mother, isn't it ? " 
 
 It was from hearing Rosalind that we grad- 
 ually got into the way of saying " pa " and
 
 40 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " ma," Polly and me. I don't know whether 
 they quite liked it, but Rosalind always called 
 them " pa " and " ma/' and they couldn't very 
 well find fault with us for calling them as she 
 did. And they really were, both of them, that 
 taken up with Rosalind that it seemed as if she 
 couldn't say or do anything wrong for them. 
 
 We moved from Astley Crescent to Rosedale 
 just three days after Ted and Rosalind were 
 married. Of course, we all went to the wedding, 
 and Polly and me were bridesmaids as well as 
 Rosalind's two sisters. She wore a white silk 
 gown with a long train, with a shower of tulle 
 over her head, and a sort of little crown of or- 
 ange blossoms. The bridesmaids were all dressed 
 alike in pale blue, with big blue hats, and bangles 
 given by the bridegroom. I think the only thing 
 father grudged was that Ted had to do so much, 
 for what with bouquets and bangles and other
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 41 
 
 things, his extras didn't cost him a penny under 
 thirty pounds. 
 
 But. as Ted himself said, there's a difference in 
 weddings, and it's the bride that makes it. 
 
 " If I was marrying a girl with two frocks, and 
 no more belonging to her than a few things 
 scraped together out of her own earnings in her 
 bottom drawer, I should have no more expense 
 than paying for the bans and the ring. But when 
 a fellow is marrying a girl with a hundred a year 
 of her own, to say nothing of what's to follow, 
 he can't do things on the cheap as he could if she 
 had nothing tied to her tail." 
 
 " Which," as pa said, " is sound reason, and no 
 more than common sense." 
 
 Rosalind's pa gave a splendid sit-down break- 
 fast, with oyster-patties and champagne, and ever 
 so many other good things. And there were lots 
 of speeches, and then Ted tried to pull the bride's 
 ring off, and there was all sorts of fun. And
 
 42 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 then she suddenly rose and rustled away with her 
 next eldest sister to change her white silk frock 
 for her traveling gown, which vas a smart tailor- 
 made costume of dark brown, worn with a seal- 
 skin coat one of Ted's wedding presents to her. 
 And then they said good-bye to every one, and 
 we had a chance of looking over the wedding 
 presents, because all the company cleared out as 
 if it was rather improper to stay in .the house for 
 ten minutes after the bride and bridegroom had 
 taken their departure. And my, what presents 
 they had ! Silver and glass and fine china with- 
 out end; and a complete table service of best 
 electro in a case, a grand piano, and a lovely 
 drawing-room lounge. I wondered where they 
 would put everything, and how they would stow 
 all the silver and glass and things away ; but ma 
 soon disposed of them all, in her own mind, 
 that is. 
 i " Rosalind will very likely make the little room
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 43 
 
 on the second floor into a keeping-room, she said. 
 " If I was her, I should have it fitted properly 
 with white wood shelves and cupboard. Then 
 she'll have a chance of keeping all her pretty 
 things so that they'll be a pleasme rather than a 
 trouble to her." 
 
 However, she only made the suggestion, and 
 left it to Ted's wife how queer it sounded! 
 to do as she liked about carrying it out. Mother 
 I mean ma like all the rest of us, was too 
 busy over her own move to poke her nose into 
 her daughter-in-law's business. And yet, as ma 
 said, we needn't have been so fussed about it, for 
 we were taking nothing away from Astley Cres- 
 cent but a few little personal belongings orna- 
 ments that ma valued above the ordinary, and 
 that she meant to put in her own bedroom and 
 dressing-room. 
 
 And, at last, we made the move, and went into 
 private life, leaving the shop behind us forever,
 
 44 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 Polly was then just on the point of eighteen, 
 being just a year and a half older than me. The 
 night we first passed at Rosedale, as we sat over 
 the fire in our bedroom doing our hairs, she 
 talked the situation over with me. I must tell 
 you that when we had first discussed the new 
 home, ma had given Polly and me our choice in 
 certain matters. 
 
 " Now, here are two nice, sunny, cheerful 
 rooms," she said. " Would you like them fur- 
 nished as bedrooms, or will you still sleep in one 
 room and have the other for your sitting-room ? " 
 
 "As a sitting-room, ma," we both cried in a 
 breath. 
 
 We had always been used to sharing a bed- 
 room, Polly and me, and I think either of us 
 would be frightened to sleep in a room alone. 
 
 So ma furnished the second room as a sitting- 
 room in white and gold, and pa gave us a little 
 white-and-gold piano. The carpet was pale blue,
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 45 
 
 and the curtains were striped blue and white, 
 with a gold cord at the edges ; and with all our 
 photos and other odds and ends, the little room 
 was as dainty a little nest as two young girls ever 
 had to call their own. 
 
 " Now, Anna Maria," said Polly to me, as we 
 sat over the fire that first night in our new home, 
 " we've got a smart house and a smart boudoir 
 of our own, and we must live up to it." 
 
 " Is this our boudoir ? " I asked, looking round 
 the pretty bedroom. 
 
 " No, silly this is our bedroom. The sitting- 
 room is our boudoir, only we mustn't call it so, 
 because ma's own little sitting-room, next the 
 morning-room, is to be called the boudoir." 
 
 " Who said so ? " I asked, wondering at Polly's 
 knowledge of big private houses and their ways. 
 
 " Nobody said so. I saw it on the bell-board, 
 and I went and rang all the bells till I found out 
 which was which. And then I remembered that
 
 46 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 that was what they called the room where Rosa- 
 lind's presents were all laid out in. I wouldn't 
 ask them exactly how they called it, because it's 
 bad enough not to know things without letting on 
 to outsiders that one doesn't know. See ? " 
 
 I said yes; but don't know that I did see 
 exactly. 
 
 "What do you call it?" I asked, wishing to 
 make quite sure. 
 
 " The boo-dore," said Polly, very distinctly. 
 
 " ' The boo-dore/ all right ; I won't forget. 
 But what are we to call our room ? " I asked. 
 
 "That's just what I can't think," said Polly; 
 " but I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll keep our 
 ears open, and see what other girls call their 
 rooms, when we get to know the people round 
 about."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ROSEDALE. 
 
 " It's hard to sleep in down when you've been used to 
 straw." 
 
 I THINK what struck every one of us at Rose- 
 dale was the unearthly quiet. I had never been 
 in such a ghastly stillness in all my life. Every- 
 body knows, of course, that Astley Crescent is 
 one of the main thoroughfares of South Ken- 
 sington, and enough traffic went up and down 
 the road by day and by night alike to have woke 
 the very dead. I'm sure if one had a cold or any- 
 thing, one had only to sit at one of our drawing- 
 room windows to be as well amused as if one was 
 at the play ; for what with the cabs and carriages 
 always dashing up and down, the gayly dressed 
 ladies peering in and out of the different shops,
 
 48 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 the pretty children with their nurses, the smart 
 young men on the lookout for the smart young 
 ladies, and the old gentlemen who came to get 
 up an appetite on the sunny side of the way, why, 
 Astley Crescent was a regular tableau vivant, and 
 far more amusing than any of the tableaux vivants 
 that they got up several winters at Astley Chapel 
 in aid of the new organ funds. Exactly opposite 
 to our house was a shop kept by a lady of title, 
 Lady Millicent Goode. I used to watch them, 
 and so did Polly; and I fancy if mother had 
 known all that went on behind the rose-colored 
 silk curtains she would have forbidden us to sit 
 at the windows which overlooked them. But ma 
 was always so busy in the little glass counting- 
 house, or talking to our customers that came in, 
 that she never had time to attend to her neigh- 
 bors' business. 
 
 Lady Millicent came across to speak to ma the 
 very day she took possession of her premises.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 49 
 
 " I am Lady Millicent Goode, Mrs. Binks," she 
 said, in most pleasant tones. " I've taken the 
 house opposite, and my friend, Lady Dredding- 
 ham, told me I was to be sure to deal with you 
 for my milk and things." 
 
 " I am very much obliged to her ladyship, my 
 lady," said ma, very politely. " May I ask if 
 your ladyship is going to live there ? " 
 
 " I am," said Lady Millicent, with a gay laugh. 
 " I'm going to start a milliner's business, and 
 I'm going to have afternoon tea going every day 
 from four to six o'clock. So I want you to sup- 
 ply me with cream and with the freshest of fresh 
 butter every day but Saturday. I believe in a 
 half holiday once a week, Mrs. Binks, don't 
 you?" 
 
 " Well, my lady," said ma, in her most doubt- 
 ful tone, " I suppose a holiday now and again is 
 a very good thing ; but those that insist most on
 
 50 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 holidays generally insist on having their milk de- 
 livered just the same." 
 
 " Ah, I dare say," said her ladyship. " There's 
 such a difference between my holiday and yours, 
 isn't there ? " 
 
 They talked a little more about the milk and 
 cream and butter that would be wanted; and 
 then mother, who was nothing if not fair, espe- 
 cially to other tradespeople, suggested that it 
 would be best to send over so many little jugs 
 filled with cream, and to take back at six o'clock 
 all that had not been used. 
 
 " Nay," Lady Millicent said quickly ; it would 
 be a waste to the jugs unless we were sure they 
 would be used. Send over a jug of a size to 
 fill so many little jugs, every afternoon at ten 
 minutes to four, and another at ten minutes to 
 five. Then if trade has been slack, I can say I 
 don't want the second one." 
 
 " Very good, my lady," said ma, smiling.
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 51 
 
 "And, Mrs. Binks," Lady Millicent went on, 
 " you must be neighborly, and come and patron- 
 ize me." 
 
 " My lady," said ma, " I know what trade is 
 far better than you do. If any of your smart 
 customers was to see me going in and out of your 
 premises, they would go elsewhere for their 
 bonnets." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Oh, I'm not going to do business 
 like that, I can tell you. I shall only get the very 
 best French models, and I shall only use French 
 girls to work. I'm going to bring them over. 
 I've secured them all, and they're going to live 
 in the house, and I'm going to make my fortune. 
 But I'm not going to make it by selling one bon- 
 net a week to my personal friends. I'm going to 
 have the smartest, most up-to-date, most popular 
 bonnet-shop in London, because my millinery is 
 going to be like your cream and butter the very 
 best to be had for money or otherwise."
 
 52 THE SINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " My lady," said ma, " you're starting on the 
 right track, and with the right ideas to make suc- 
 cess. I know what building up a big business 
 means. It can be done, but not lightly or unad- 
 visedly. In the words of the Psalmist, you must 
 rise up early and late, take rest, and eat the bread 
 of carefulness. Not, my lady, that you mustn't 
 take your natural rest, but, on the other hand, 
 you must give your whole mind, your whole 
 heart to your business if you want to make it pay 
 its way. I've heard a little of lady milliners 
 ladies of rank and position like yourself; they 
 try to do two things at once, to live two lives. It's 
 not to be done, my lady, not as a paying concern." 
 
 " But I am going to make that business pay, 
 and pay well," said Lady Millicent, in a very em- 
 phatic tone. 
 
 " Not unless you regular lay yourself down to 
 it, my lady," said ma, with equal decision. 
 
 " I must go into society to a certain extent, so
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 53 
 
 as to find my clientele" said she. " But I am go- 
 ing to put my business first and foremost. I've 
 got a good incentive, Mrs. Binks I've a dear lit- 
 tle girl I want to provide for beyond what I have 
 already." 
 
 Ma softened at once. " I wish you the best of 
 luck, my lady," she said. " And if to make my 
 bonnets or my girls' hats would help you, I'll 
 bring my custom to you with all my heart such 
 as it is, my lady, such as it is." 
 
 " Such as it is," cried Lady Millicent, shaking 
 the tears back from her eyes and laughing gayly. 
 " If this is one of your girls, why, I shall think 
 out her hats with as much pleasure as I would 
 for one of the young princesses. I'll let you know 
 when the show is ready, Mrs. Binks, and you 
 shall come across as a neighbor and see it with- 
 out any obligation to spend a penny unless you 
 really want to." 
 
 Thank you very much indeed, my lady," said
 
 54 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 ma. " But we'll come when all is quiet out of 
 regular business hours, if you please, for the 
 same reason that I mentioned just now." 
 
 " Very well, Mrs. Binks ; you shall have a pri- 
 vate view all to yourself. There ! " 
 
 After that we always got our hats and ma her 
 bonnets of Lady Millicent; and when Rosalind 
 was getting her trousseau re.dy, ma took her 
 across and introduced her to Lady Millicent, and 
 she got her hats there too. And the millinery 
 business did well. You see, Lady Millicent, who 
 was, as ma often said, " my lady " every inch 
 of her, wasn't a bit stuck-up or haughty, but used 
 to run across to ask ma's advice whenever she 
 was a bit nonplused " as one business woman of 
 another, Mrs. Binks ; " never gave herself airs, 
 but made all her customers feel themselves wel- 
 come; and if, owing to that hint from ma, she 
 kept herself mum as to what other customers she 
 had, why, it pleased all parties and hurt nobody.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 55 
 
 But my! How they did carry on at No. 30 
 Astley Crescent, S. W. ! Those rose-colored silk 
 curtains, covered with white filmy lace ones, hid 
 a lot that the outer world never suspected. The 
 customers were not confined to ladies by any 
 means. I've seen more than one gentleman that 
 I knew well by sight and who carried H. R. H. 
 in front of his name, drive up in a handsome little 
 quiet brougham, and step gayly into No. 30, as if 
 he was quite at home. It's true that the lady 
 H. R. H/s used to go too, very often, and many 
 a time I've watched them with the opera-glasses, 
 and seen them at tea in the large front drawing- 
 room, where Lady Millicent showed her very 
 best things lovely hats and bonnets, a stock of 
 rare old lace and a few of the latest Parisian nov- 
 elties in tea gowns matinees she always called 
 them and such-like things. I noticed that Lady 
 Millicent always did all the show-work herself 
 then, and that she served tea and everything with-
 
 5 6 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 out once sitting down. But when the H. R. H. was 
 a gentleman, she used to sit down just as if he was 
 an ordinary gentleman, and generally she showed 
 the hats and bonnets off on her own pretty head. 
 I've seen a good many other things, too, but those 
 I don't feel called upon to spealc to. Lady Milli- 
 cent Goode was a real friend to me in many ways, 
 and, as ma often said, " What's never spoke can 
 never be brought home." 
 
 So it can readily be understood that after a 
 lively neighborhood like Astley Crescent, we did 
 find Rosedale almost too ghastly quiet for words 
 to tell. You see, Rosedale stood in a private 
 road, a sort of side road well away from any of 
 the main traffic. The house stood well back from 
 the roadway, and was approached by a neat cir- 
 cular drive. It was so hidden by laurel and 
 other shrubs that it was impossible to get even a 
 glimpse of the entrance or lower windows from 
 the road and equally impossible to get so much
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 57 
 
 as a glimpse of any passers-by from any of the 
 sitting-room windows. It was all very well to 
 call it delightfully private and retired, but after 
 a road like a moving panorama, such as Astley 
 Crescent, the deadly stillness was quite enough 
 to drive any one silly. 
 
 " It's like being in chapel, isn't it ? " said Polly 
 to me, when we were getting up the next 
 morning. 
 
 " Awful quiet," I replied. 
 
 " I dare say we shall get used to it," she said, 
 philosophically. " If you remember, Anna Maria, 
 when Lady Millicent first came to Astley Cres- 
 cent, she used to complain so terribly of the dis- 
 tracting noise of the street. It's stylish to live in 
 a quiet place like this. I shall make a point of 
 always saying how delicious the delightful quiet 
 is, so different to the roar of London streets." 
 
 " To the ceaseless roar of London streets," I 
 corrected.
 
 S 8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " No ; not ceaseless," said Polly. " Lady Mil- 
 licent did say ceaseless, it's true ; but we don't 
 want people here to think we came out of the 
 Strand or Holborn." 
 
 How clever Polly was ! She seemed to pick up 
 every point as she went along, and to turn every- 
 thing to her own advantage. I saw the things 
 clear enough when she pointed them out to me, 
 but I don't believe if I'd been left to myself that 
 I should have made half the progress that I did 
 through Polly. 
 
 As soon as the breakfast was over, ma went off 
 to see to her new store-room, and Polly and me 
 dressed ourselves and went out to look at the 
 shops and explore the neighborhood a little. 
 And what nice, smart girls we did see walking 
 about, each with their dog and a stick, and some 
 of them driving themselves in smart little pony- 
 carts ! 
 
 " How nice it will be when we get to know
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 59 
 
 them ! " said Polly. " I wonder how soon they'll 
 begin calling on us ? " 
 
 " Not till we've been to chapel," I said. 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder if that's not just about 
 the truth," said Polly. 
 
 But we had some callers before Sunday came 
 round all the same. Rosalind had a cousin, not 
 very long married, who lived only about half a 
 mile from Rosedale, and that very afternoon she 
 came driving up in a victoria, and sent in her 
 cards as stylish as you please. Polly and me were 
 in ma's bedroom when Elizabeth brought them in 
 on a neat little waiter. 
 
 "'Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers/" read Polly 
 " 'Mr. Joscelyn Smithers/ Where are they, 
 Elizabeth?" 
 
 " The lady is in the drawing-room, miss. Shall 
 I bring tea, m'm ? " 
 
 " Tea? " said ma, doubtfully. Elizabeth was a 
 parlor-maid we had engaged in the place, so ma
 
 60 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 looked to her as knowing the right way better 
 than she did. " Wouldn't you have cake and 
 wine, Elizabeth ? " 
 
 " They never does about here, m'm," said 
 Elizabeth. "I think I'd better bring it in as 
 they're used to hereabouts." 
 
 " Well, if you're sure you know, Elizabeth," 
 said ma, still half hesitating. 
 
 " I'll bring it in, m'm, and the young ladies'll 
 serve it," said Elizabeth, rather patronizingly. 
 
 " Why, oh, why didn't we ask Rosalind about 
 this ? " I muttered to Polly, as we followed ma 
 downstairs. 
 
 "We shall find out for ourselves," answered 
 Polly. "I'd rather any day pick up a wrinkle 
 from Elizabeth than from Rosalind. Elizabeth 
 won't always be our parlor-maid, but Rosalind 
 will always be our sister-in-law."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 NEW-FANGLED WAYS. 
 " Everybody knows that ' Pride is painful.' " 
 
 MRS. JOSCELYN SMITHERS was sitting in a big 
 arm-chair in the very middle of the drawing- 
 room, and she got up when we went in quite as 
 if it was her house instead of ours. 
 
 " How do you do, Mrs. Binks ? So pleased to 
 welcome you to Norwood. Are these your daugh- 
 ters? My cousin Rosalind told me what charm- 
 ing girls you have. And my husband saw them 
 at the wedding. I wasn't there no; in fact I 
 was laid up with a severe cold, much to my 
 regret." 
 
 "Thank you. I'm very pleased to see you," 
 said ma.
 
 62 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Won't you take a seat ? Yes ; these are my 
 girls Polly, the eldest, and Anna Maria." 
 
 " The baby of the family? " said Mrs. Joscelyn 
 Smithers, with a laugh, as she stretched out a 
 hand in a delicate pearl-gray glove to each of us 
 in turn. 
 
 "Yes, I'm the baby," I said. 
 
 " And a very nice baby too," she rejoined, eye- 
 ing me up and down approvingly. 
 
 I tried not to look to conscious, and then Eliza- 
 beth created a diversion by coming in with a 
 folded cloth in her hand. It was a cloth edged 
 with lace, that ma had won in a raffle at Astley 
 Chapel, but which we had never used, so far, as 
 it seemed too smart for a tray cloth. She picked 
 up the little table that stood near the door with 
 the grandest air, and carried it across close to 
 where Polly was sitting. Then she spread the 
 cloth on it and disappeared, coming back a min- 
 ute later with a little tray, smartly set out with
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 63 
 
 four of our best cups and saucers, the little silver 
 tea-set that pa had given ma for her silver wed- 
 ding present, and which she had never used since 
 that day. She had also brought a little glass and 
 silver dish with two compartments that had been 
 another of ma's silver wedding presents, on one 
 side of which she had put a little pile of rolled 
 bread and butter and on the other some neat little 
 wedges of rich plum cake. 
 
 Polly got up at once to do the honors of the 
 tea-pot, and I saw her nervously clutch at the 
 sugar-tongs and look towards Mrs. Joscelyn 
 Smithers as if she was going to ask her if she 
 took sugar or not. 
 
 " I'll hand the basin," I said in a whisper. I 
 hadn't sat behind the curtains in Astley Crescent 
 watching Lady Millicent and royalty with an 
 opera-glass not to know that much. 
 
 So when Polly had poured out the tea and car- 
 ried the first cup to Mrs. Smithers, I followed
 
 64 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 with the sugar-basin and the little glass and sil- 
 ver dish. 
 
 " No sugar, thanks," said Mrs. Smithers, with 
 an airy smile. " Yes ; just a bit of your de- 
 lightful-looking bread and butter." 
 
 At last, when the two ladies had exhausted the 
 weather, the servant question, and the advantages 
 of town against suburban residence, and after 
 Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers had promised to make us 
 known to some of the nicest people in the place, 
 ma put a question on an entirely different subject. 
 
 *' And what chapel do you patronize, Mrs. 
 Smithers ? " she demanded. 
 
 " We go to the Congregational Church in 
 Bathurst Road," Mrs. Smithers answered. " Mr. 
 Sutton Wingfield is the pastor. I have already 
 asked him to call on you. Most charming people. 
 A divine preacher. I always tell him it is only 
 his personal charm that keeps me from attending 
 at the Church of England."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 65 
 
 Ma stiffened all at once. 
 
 " My principles are more confirmed than that," 
 she said. " I could never bring myself to " 
 
 " Well," Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers interrupted, 
 lightly, " it very much depends on what one's so- 
 cial ambitions happen to be. There is an advan- 
 tage in belonging to the Church of England, Mrs. 
 Binks, and no dissenting body in the world ever 
 quite makes it equal. However, as long as we 
 stop in Norwood, and Mr. Wingfield remains pas- 
 tor of the church in Bathurst Road, we shall make 
 no change." 
 
 Then she gayly took herself off to the victoria 
 still standing at the gate. Ma came no further 
 than the hall with her, but Polly and me went 
 out to the gate. Elizabeth was out there talking 
 to the coachman, and holding a large breakfast 
 cup in her hand; and as we all came out the 
 coachman flicked his livery over with his hand, 
 after he had touched his hat to his mistress. Eliza-
 
 66 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 beth put the cup down on the railings by the gate, 
 and spread the light summer rug over Mrs. Jos- 
 celyn Smither's pretty gray dress, in the grand- 
 est way. 
 
 " Thank you," said she, with a haughty sort of 
 bend of her head. " To Rosamunde Road." Then, 
 .with a last wave of her hand to us, the carriage 
 moved off, and she was quickly out of sight. 
 
 Elizabeth stood for a second or two watching; 
 then, with ever such a curious expression about 
 the mouth, she turned back, picked up the cup 
 and saucer, and went indoors. 
 
 " I'd give something to know as much as she 
 knows," said Polly, as Elizabeth's black skirt dis- 
 appeared. " We shall come to it, of course, but 
 it's a bore having to find out as one goes along. 
 Do you like her, Anna Maria ? " 
 
 " Ye-es," I returned, doubtfully. 
 
 That's just how I feel. So patronizing. She's 
 very stylish, though, isn't she?"
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 67 
 
 " Very, very stylish," I replied. 
 
 " Far more stylish than Rosalind even," Polly 
 went on. 
 
 " But not like Lady Millicent," I declared. "I 
 call Lady Millicent real stylish. Mrs. Joscelyn 
 Smithers is a bit too fine. She kind of chews 
 her words as if she'd got something in her mouth 
 all the time. Still, she' nice and friendly in a 
 way, and we shall get to know lots of people 
 through her, I dare say." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; we must take people as we find 
 them," said Polly. " What a mercy it was Eliza- 
 beth knew all about the tea! Cake and wine 
 would have done for us with a stylish woman 
 like that. I can't think how it was we didn't 
 know about tea. You see, ma was always stuck 
 in that horrid shop, so that no one ever called on 
 her as they do here. But Lady Millicent used to 
 have tea going for a couple of hours every after-
 
 68 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 noon. We ought to have known it was the right 
 thing to have." 
 
 " It doesn't matter," said I. " We managed it 
 all beautifully, I'm sure. Oh, Polly," I broke 
 off short, " there is another visitor ! It must be 
 the pastor." 
 
 But it wasn't. No, it was a lady with a tall 
 girl about seventeen with her, and when we went 
 in, there was ma set in state again. 
 
 " These are my two girls, Mrs. Leynes," she 
 said. 
 
 Mrs. Leynes held out a hand to us each in 
 turn. 
 
 " My girl will be delighted to make their ac- 
 quaintance," she said, with a gesture towards the 
 tall girl, who was looking half nervously at us. 
 " Myra has been abroad at school so very long 
 that she has not many friends in Norwood yet." 
 
 Myra got up and shook hands with each of us, 
 and then Elizabeth sailed in again with the tea-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 69 
 
 tray freshly arranged, having left the little table 
 with the lace-edged cloth where she had first set 
 it. And then we went through the tea-serving 
 process again, Polly pouring out a cup for ma 
 and carrying it to her, after having served the 
 visitors. Then we settled down to selemnly 
 drinking our tea and eating little wedges of cake. 
 
 " Do you like your new home ? " asked Myra 
 Leynes shyly of us two. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; we were charmed with it," said 
 Polly. 
 
 " So deliciously quiet here," I chimed in. 
 
 " Too quiet, I think," she said, a little less 
 shyly. " But, then, I've been five years in Paris, 
 and Paris is very gay." 
 
 "And we've lived all our lives in London," 
 cried Polly, with a laugh. " So that's why we 
 like the quietness here." 
 
 Then she began to talk as girls do asking did 
 we like tennis, and did we play croquet.
 
 70 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Well, we've only played when we've joined 
 a club at the seaside," Polly replied. 
 
 " You ought to join the tennis club here." 
 
 "There is one?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; there are all sorts of clubs tennis, 
 amateur theatricals, singing, Browning, Shake- 
 speare, and several other reading clubs. I belong 
 to the Rossetti Club. I adore Rossetti." 
 
 I looked at Polly, and saw that she no better 
 than I did what Rossetti meant. 
 
 And just then Mrs. Leynes got up to take her 
 leave. 
 
 " Then good-bye, Mrs. Binks. I shall hope to 
 see you and your daughters on Tuesday that's 
 my day. Good-bye good-bye." 
 
 Ma followed her to the door, and Polly and me 
 went further, as we had done with Mrs. Joscelyn 
 Smithers. But Mrs. Leynes just put down some 
 cards out of her case on the hall table, and passed 
 out with a civil " good afternoon " to Elizabeth,
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 71 
 
 evidently not expecting us to have followed theiu 
 at all. Elizabeth shut the door and passed into 
 the drawing-room, reappearing a minute later 
 with the tea-tray. 
 
 " Now, I wonder," said Polly, as she stood 
 fingering the cards " I wonder why she left her 
 cards as she went out, and Mrs. Joscelyn Smith- 
 er s sent hers in by Elizabeth ? " 
 
 " We shall find out by and by," I said. 
 
 " Of the two I'd back Mrs. Leynes to know," 
 said Polly, thoughtfully. 
 
 " Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers had a carriage, and 
 Mrs. Leynes walked," I said. 
 
 " Yes ; but Mrs. Leynes knows best," said 
 Polly, with conviction. She took the cards as she 
 spoke, and read them. " Mrs. Frederick Leynes 
 Miss Leynes Hawkhurst, Clifton Road, Nor- 
 wood," she said. " Mr. Frederick Leynes Mr. 
 Frederick Leynes etc. You see, Anna Maria, we 
 ought to have our names on ma's cards like this."
 
 72 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " And ma hasn't even ordered any new cards 
 yet," I said, thinking how awkward it would be 
 for ma to make return visits and to have no new 
 cards to leave at the different houses. " Oh, ma," 
 I added, as ma came out of the drawing-room, 
 " you ought to order new cards at once, or you 
 won't have any to leave when you return the 
 visits. I can't think why you didn't order them 
 ever so long ago." 
 
 " Well, you see," said ma, quite apologetically, 
 " in business one doesn't use cards above two or 
 three times a year. I never gave it a thought. Oh, 
 I do feel so What's that? " 
 
 " More company," said Polly in a loud whis- 
 per. " Come and set down in the drawing-room." 
 
 We had barely got settled in our different 
 chairs, each with our hands before us doing noth- 
 ing, when Elizabeth entered, announcing in a 
 loud, distinct voice: 
 
 " Mr. Sutton Wingfield."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 73 
 
 Ma got up all in a flurry. 
 
 " I am very much pleased to see you, sir," she 
 said. " It is extremely kind of you to come to 
 honor us so soon." 
 
 " I am more than pleased to welcome you to 
 Norwood, Mrs. Binks," said Mr. Wingfield, in 
 very suave and fatherly accents. " My good 
 friend, Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers, told me of your 
 coming. A relative of yours, I think she told 
 me." 
 
 " Not exactly that," said ma, " but of my son's 
 wife. It was kind of her to make our coming 
 known to you. I am sorry that my husband is 
 not at home to receive you, sir. He will be hon- 
 ored to make your acquaintance." 
 
 " And I am sorry that my wife was not able 
 to come with me to-day," said Mr. Wingfield. 
 " She is quite prostrate with a violent headache. 
 She is subject to them. But another day she will 
 repair the omission, if you will allow her."
 
 74 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " I shall be only too glad whenever it is con- 
 venient to Mrs. Wingfield," said ma. 
 
 And then the door opened, and Elizabeth came 
 marching in again with a fresh tea-tray, the little 
 silver pot full of steaming tea, freshly rolled 
 bread and butter on one side of the glass and sil- 
 ver dish, and a fresh little pile of neatly cut cake 
 on the other. 
 
 Ma cast a glance of positive despair at Polly as 
 she got up to pour out the tea, but Polly appar- 
 ently did not see, and served us all alike, just as 
 if we hadn't had any tea before. And so we sat 
 round drinking tea and choking down our bits 
 of cake, until at last, having made himself thor- 
 oughly pleasant and agreeable, Mr. Wingfield be- 
 took himself away. 
 
 " If I've got to go on drinking tea like this all 
 the afternoon, it will be the death of me," said 
 ma. "I'm that filled up, I feel fit to choke;"
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 75 
 
 and she laid her hand over her waist-buckle as if 
 she had an oppression there. 
 
 " It's safest to have tea with them all until we 
 make sure," said Polly. " You wouldn't like t<3 
 offend any one, would you, ma, dear?" 
 
 " I wish I was back in Astley Crescent, that I 
 do," said ma, miserably. " This going in for so- 
 ciety is too much for me altogether. I'm that 
 filled up I shan't be able to touch my regular tea 
 at six o'clock, and if I go fasting right up to sup- 
 per time I shall be faint for want. Three great 
 cups of tea, and you filled them right up to the 
 brim, Polly." 
 
 " Why didn't you leave half of it? ' said Polly. 
 
 "And let people think my tea wasn't good? 
 Not me. But I'm that filled up " 
 
 " Have a little nip of brandy to settle it," said 
 Polly. 
 
 " Brandy ! In the afternoon ? " echoed ma, still 
 holding her hand gingerly over her waist. " Well,
 
 76 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 it was a great teacher who said, ' Take a little 
 wine for thy stomach's sake,' and I will have a 
 tablespoonful of brandy, Polly, neat, in a wine- 
 glass."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 77 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HINTS. 
 
 " It's hard when you come to four cross-roads, and 
 there's no sign-post." 
 
 WE were quite nonplused when it came to or- 
 dering ma's new cards. It was easy enough to 
 write on the paper of instructions, " Mrs. Joseph 
 Binks," and in the lower left-hand corner, " Rose- 
 dale, Cathcart Avenue, Norwood." But it was 
 another matter when it came to deciding about 
 our names. Ought ma to put " Miss Binks 
 Miss Anna Maria Binks," " Miss Mary Binks 
 Miss Anna Maria Binks," or " The Misses 
 Binks?" 
 
 It was no use looking at Mrs. Leynes's card. 
 On that was written, or rather printed, " Mrs. 
 Frederick Leynes Miss Leynes." That did not 
 help us, for Mrs. Leynes had spoken of Myra as
 
 78 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " my only girl." Mrs. Joscelyn Smithers was too 
 young a woman to have daughters old enough to 
 go visiting. 
 
 " So what are we to do ? " asked Polly, in de- 
 spair. 
 
 " Ask Rosalind," said ma. 
 
 " Not Rosalind," said Polly, with decision ; and 
 I knew why. Rosalind wouldn't know. Her 
 mother was dead, and she had cards of her own. 
 
 " I know," I cried. " Get a book that'll tell us 
 all about those things." 
 
 " That's a good idea," said Polly. " I wonder 
 if we could get one in Norwood, or whether we 
 had better send to town for it ? " 
 
 " Send to town," said I, promptly. " I wouldn't 
 let any one in Norwood know that we had any 
 need of such a thing." 
 
 " I ought to be able to remember from when 
 I lived with Lady Anna," said ma ; " but some- 
 how, I don't believe I noticed such things one way
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 79 
 
 or another." And then she sighed, and said: 
 " I don't think society will suit me ; but I sup- 
 pose I must go through with it for the sake of 
 you girls." 
 
 " Oh, yes, ma ! It will be easy enough when 
 once we're in it," said Polly, lightly. 
 
 Ma shook her head as if it would never be 
 easy to her to go on drinking one cup of tea after 
 another as she had done that afternoon ; but Polly 
 had promised to bear it in mind, and only give 
 her a small half-cup each time, and so she 
 wouldn't find her own hospital too trying. 
 
 And the next morning Polly and me dressed 
 early, and went off to Astley Crescent to see if 
 everything was straight for Ted and Rosalind to 
 come home to ; and then Polly suggested that we 
 should go off to the Brompton Road to find a 
 good bookseller's shop, where she might get a 
 book that would help us out of our difficulties 
 about ma's cards.
 
 8o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 She was a cool one, was Polly. She marched 
 in as bold as brass, and says : 
 
 " Oh, I want a small book for keeping ad- 
 dresses in." 
 
 " Certainly, madam," said the young man. 
 " Perhaps this is what you require ? " As he 
 spoke he held out a little book about three inches 
 by five, with a limp cover, on which " Where is 
 it ? " was printed in gold. 
 
 Polly looked at it rather doubtfully. 
 
 " This is very small," she said. 
 
 " I have them much larger, madam," said he ; 
 and thereupon produced a similar book of about 
 twice the size. 
 
 Polly asked the price, and then said she would 
 have it. 
 
 " Have you any books on on visiting and ar- 
 ranging weddings and such like ? " she inquired 
 next. 
 
 I felt myself going as red as beetroot, but Polly
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 81 
 
 was perfectly cool and unconcerned. The young 
 gentleman pondered for a minute with an air as 
 if she had asked for a book on the management 
 of negro babies, and then, with an elaborate air of 
 sudden enlightenment, he said: 
 
 " Do you mean a book of etiquette, madam ? " 
 
 " Yes. Please show me one," said Polly. 
 
 That was what I admired in Polly. She could 
 be so haughty when she liked. No one, to look 
 at her at that moment, would have imagined that 
 she had ever been in a shop, except as a customer, 
 in all her life. The young gentleman stepped 
 back, and then returned, bringing several small- 
 looking books with him, which he put on the 
 counter in front of Polly. 
 
 " This is by the Honorable Evelyn MacSlush," 
 he said, putting one into my sister's hand. 
 
 Polly turned over the leaves with a critical air. 
 
 " To put your knife into your mouth is a 
 great sol sol solecism," she read under her
 
 82 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 breath. " Horrid bad manners, I call it," she 
 muttered; then put the book down and took up 
 one of the others. 
 
 " There has been a great run on that," said 
 the young gentleman, as Polly turned over the 
 leaves of the second book. 
 
 " ' Hints to a Novice in Society/ " read Polly. 
 " See, Anna Maria, this gives all about both wed- 
 dings and christenings and drawing-room teas 
 and bazaars. It will tell just what we want. The 
 price? Three and six. Then I'll take it." 
 
 " It's a very small book for three and six, 
 Polly," I said, as we walked away down the road. 
 
 " That doesn't matter. It will tell us all we 
 most want to know, and that's the main thing,'* 
 Polly rejoined. " It looked to me full of all sorts 
 of valuable information. That's the worst of 
 having to take it all up new. Poor dear ma's 
 gone stodging on in the business so long that
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 83 
 
 she's forgot all she ever knew of such little 
 matters." 
 
 How clever it was of Polly to assume that, of 
 course, ma had known all about cards and after- 
 noon tea and the proper way to do everything ! I 
 admired Polly more than I have any words to tell. 
 
 We got back to Rosedale just as the dinner-bell 
 was ringing. 
 
 " No pa again ? " said Polly. 
 
 " No ; he had to run down to the farm," said 
 ma, as she seated herself at the head of the table. 
 " He's been talking to me this morning, girls, and 
 he says, come what will, he must have his dinner 
 in the evening. I'm sure I don't know how it will 
 agree with him, uprooting all his habits at his 
 time of life." 
 
 " Lor', ma, you talk as if pa was dead old ! " 
 cried Polly. " If it suits him better to have his 
 dinner at eight instead of his supper at nine, why; 
 shouldn't he have it?"
 
 84 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Tea at six and dinner at eight ! " cried ma. 
 
 " Not at all. Tea at four o'clock, just a tray in 
 the drawing-room if there's comp'ny, or in the 
 boodore if we're alone ; and then dinner at eight, 
 and a biscuit later on if you feel a want." 
 
 Ma shook her head; and just then Elizabeth 
 came in with the soup-tureen, and stood ready to 
 whip the plates off one by one as fast as ma filled 
 them, so that we could not say anything more 
 about it. 
 
 She was in and out of the room all the time, 
 so that we hadn't a chance of any private talk as 
 long as the meal lasted. Then, when I did think 
 ;we were rid of her, she looked at ma and said : 
 
 " Shall I serve coffee here or in the boodore, 
 m'm?" 
 
 "Coffee!" Ma's jaw fairly dropped. 
 
 " You'll take coffee, m'm, won't you ? " Eliza- 
 beth asked. " Cook has prepared it." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; here here, Elizabeth," said ma.
 
 OH, GIRLS, GIRLS, I WISH I WAS BACK IN ASTLEY CRESCENT, IN MY OWN 
 COMFORTABLE SHOP." Page 85
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 85 
 
 There was a little coffee-pot to ma's silver 
 set, and Elizabeth set first three cups and saucers, 
 then the little silver coal-pan and scoop that we 
 used for sifted sugar, and finally set the decanter 
 with the brandy and the silver coffee-pot just in 
 front of ma. 
 
 Ma did not speak till the door had closed be- 
 hind the girl. 
 
 " Are we I mean, can't we have any milk to 
 it ! " ma asked piteously. 
 
 "Try it without," said Polly. "If it isn't 
 the thing, it's better to get used to it right 
 away." 
 
 " It's horrid ! " ma burst out. " Oh, girls, girls, 
 what were we thinking of to come out here and 
 upset all our habits and make ourselves miserable, 
 especially at my time of day ? I wish I was back 
 in Astley Crescent, in my own handsome, com- 
 fortable shop ! Yes ; that I do that I do ! " 
 
 " Nay, ma," said Polly ; " don't take on like
 
 86 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 that ! What's the good of you and pa being rich 
 if you had to stay stuck at business all your days, 
 with never a bit of pleasure in your lives ? It's a 
 bit strange to you just at first, living private, 
 when you've been used to putting business before 
 everything; but, after all, as we've bought the 
 house and settled down in it, it's best to begin 
 right from the very beginning. We shall soon get 
 used to the new ways, ma, dear; and you 
 wouldn't like to live different to all the people 
 round about ? " 
 
 " I suppose not," said ma, drearily. Then she 
 sat back in her high chair and let her eyes wander 
 round the handsome room, and the table set out 
 as if we were going to have a party. " I suppose 
 not. I've lived well all these years, and kept a 
 good table; but you've got to be born to using 
 your best things every day, and having a frilled- 
 up girl watching every morsel you put into your 
 mouth, and a-listening to every word you let drop.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 87 
 
 I wasn't born to it, Polly, and it's like purgatory 
 to me." 
 
 Polly was silent. She was devotedly fond of 
 ma, was Polly, and she looked real scared at this 
 new ma, so unlike her own calm, quiet, resolute 
 mother, who had ruled over Astley Crescent like 
 a queen. I think for once Polly had nothing to say. 
 
 Then ma suddenly sat up, and began to pour 
 out the coffee into the little cups. 
 
 "There! I didn't ought to have said that," 
 she said. " It isn't like me to repine. I've put 
 my hand to the plow that you girls may get on 
 and marry well, and I'll not look back at least 
 not yet. If I've got to drink coffee that's as black 
 as ink and as bitter as gall to help my children on 
 in the world, why I'll do it as part of the price. 
 There, girls, forget that your poor mother was 
 weak and silly, and pined for her old life back 
 again. As you said just now, Polly, we shall get 
 used to it after a bit."
 
 88 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 We all drank our milkless coffee, and then we 
 went into ma's little boudoir, and Polly brought 
 out the two books she had bought in the morn- 
 ing. Ma didn't take much interest in them, but 
 dropped off to sleep in her easy-chair. 
 
 And, would you believe it, though we turned 
 that wretched book over from cover to cover, the 
 one point on which we were most anxious for in- 
 formation was not to be found ! There were chap- 
 ters on manners in society, on sending out and 
 answering invitations, on dinner-parties and on 
 cards and card-leaving, but not one word as to 
 how the daughters' name should be put on the 
 mother's cards. 
 
 " Of course," one part of the card-leaving chap- 
 ter ran, " your chaperon will write your name in 
 pencil under hers." " If your father is a wid- 
 ower,"another sentence said, " your name must 
 be printed on his visiting cards (underneath his 
 name) ; and his card, in this case, must be
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 89 
 
 the size of a lady's card instead of a gentle- 
 man's." 
 
 This was all very well, but it didn't help us a 
 bit. Knowing what a girl would do if she hadn't 
 a ma did not help us to decide whether we ought 
 to put " Miss Binks," or " Miss Mary Binks " 
 " Miss Anna Maria Binks," or the " Misses 
 Binks." Really, it was aggravating! 
 
 On one point, however, the book was very posi- 
 tive, which was that no girl ought or could be al- 
 lowed to have a visiting card of her own. That 
 certainly would be to finish one right off in any- 
 thing like select circles. And yet that very after- 
 noon, just as we were thinking we might as well 
 go out for a walk, a grand carriage dashed up the 
 drive, and a footman in white-and-red livery 
 jumped and rang the bell as if he wanted to tear 
 the wire out of the wall. 
 
 " Mrs. Binks at 'ome ? " he asked ; and as Eliza-
 
 9 o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 beth said " yes," he turned and flung the carriage- 
 door open. 
 
 " 'Ere, James," said the lady, " give the girl 
 the cards, for I'm sure to forget 'em as I come 
 out." 
 
 " Yes, *m," said he, touching his hat. 
 
 I could hear every word, for the boudoir win- 
 dow was open, and the lace curtains completely 
 hid me from sight. 
 
 " Mind you've given enough, James," said she, 
 in the same imperative tone. " And two of Miss 
 Potts's cards for the young ladies. Yes; now 
 your arm." 
 
 As we went through the hall to the drawing- 
 room, Polly and me stopped to see what her name 
 was. There were ten or eleven cards lying on the 
 carved oak table. 
 
 MRS. THEODORE POTTS, 
 
 The Mansion. 
 
 MR. THEODORE POTTS, 
 
 The Mansion.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 91 
 
 Miss POTTS, 
 
 The Mansion. 
 Miss EMMY POTTS, 
 
 The Mansion. 
 
 MR. ERNEST POTTS, 
 
 The Mansion. 
 
 "And a carriage and pair like that!" said 
 Polly. " Anna Maria, how are we to make head 
 or tail of it?"
 
 92 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A GOOD START. 
 " It is possible from a corner to look up to heaven." 
 
 IF ever three and six was thrown clean away, it 
 was over that horrid book, " Hints to a Novice in 
 Society." It was cram full of all sorts of hints, 
 it is true, but it never contained information on 
 any particular point such as we happened to want. 
 For instance, we wanted especially to know 
 whether ma ought to return her visits alone, or 
 whether Polly or me, or both, ought to go with 
 her, but not one word on the subject did the 
 idiotic " Hints " give. It told us that a young girl 
 ought to go into a drawing-room with a sweet 
 smile on her face, and that she must, if she wished 
 to make herself popular, take particular care to
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 93 
 
 devote herself to shy young girls or lonely old 
 ladies. Now, it wasn't likely that Polly and me 
 would think of walking into a room with our 
 tongues sticking out or with an wn-pleasant ex- 
 pression 0*1 our faces. 
 
 As to lonely old ladies, we hadn't seen any so 
 far. Mrs. Potts was the only old lady who had 
 called, and she wasn't the kind of a person a 
 young girl could patronize and put at her ease 
 far from it. Indeed, Polly and me both found 
 ourselves, so far as we understood society in Nor- 
 wood, very much in the position of the shy 
 young girl mentioned in " Hints." 
 
 But though we searched the " Hints " through 
 and through, we could find not one word to help 
 us out of the dilemma. 
 
 " I think," said ma, at last, " that we can't do 
 better than take pattern by Mrs. Leynes. She's 
 so very stylish quite the lady in every way. She 
 brought her daughter with her, so I'll take Polly.
 
 94 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 Three's rather a handful to walk into a room at 
 once." 
 
 So Polly went with ma to return the call. At 
 least she went with her to call on Mrs. Joscelyn 
 Smithers ; but the next day, when ma was going 
 to Mrs. Leynes's she was fixed to the house with 
 a shocking cold, so ma took me instead. 
 
 I must say ma did look nice. She'd a hand- 
 some black silk gown trimmed with lace and jet, 
 a little black lace mantle over her shoulders, and 
 that was all sparkling with jet too. And on her 
 head she had one of Lady Millicent's very best 
 bonnets the one she had bought new for our 
 Ted's wedding. It was a pretty bonnet that, and 
 well worth the four guineas Lady Millicent had 
 charged her for it (at a special price, for five 
 guineas was the original figure). It was entirely 
 of jet, with masses of yellow mimosa all over the 
 front, and a high white aigrette standing straight 
 up like a soldier's plume. Pa had lunched at home
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 95 
 
 that day, and he looked her over approvingly 
 when she came down dressed to go out. 
 
 " My ! Old Lady, but you do look a swell ! " 
 he cried. 
 
 " Nay, Binks ; don't tease me," said ma. 
 
 " Tease you, my dear ! Nay, but I mean it," he 
 replied. " I don't know any man whose missis 
 can 'old a candle to you this minute. You were 
 always a good-looking woman, old lady, but 
 you're like every other woman living, you look 
 all the better for a good setting." 
 
 Ma flushed up, and smithered her handsome 
 gown quite nervously. 
 
 " Binks," she said, " the worst of it is I can't 
 get used to wearing my best things every day, 
 that I can't/ 
 
 " You've got a right to, if ever a woman had in 
 this world," he said bluntly. " You helped to 
 earn *m. As for this young popinjay," he went 
 on, pinching my ear and then giving my hair a
 
 96 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 good tug, " she'll never think twice about wear- 
 ing her best clothes, I'll warrant." 
 
 " No, pa," I said, laughing. 
 
 " Ah, well, you'll always be able to have clothes 
 and to spare," he said half sadly. " All I'm afraid 
 of is that you mayn't put 'igh enough value on 
 yourself. Always remember, my girl, that even 
 if your father's a plain business man, and your 
 mother spent most of her life helping him in the 
 shop, that between 'm they built up a business 
 that will make you and your sister able to pick 
 and choose when you come to think about hus- 
 bands." 
 
 " I never mean to make myself cheap, pa," I 
 replied, tossing my head. 
 
 He looked very hard at me for a minute before 
 he spoke. 
 
 " Well, I 'ope to Heaven you never will. It 
 wouldn't be like a Binks to thrown away a good 
 chance or the substance for the shadder. So don't
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 97 
 
 get reading too many torn-fool story-books, my 
 girl, such as teach you that all the men with 
 money are likely to hide you half your time, and 
 that all the fellers with eyes like saucers and in 
 sad want of a barber '11 make you 'appy ever after. 
 When your time comes, see that you get hold of a 
 straight, honest feller that can provide for you 
 apart from which you'll have from me, and you'll 
 satisfy your mother and me as our Ted satisfied 
 us when he picked out Rosalind." 
 
 " I'll keep it in mind, pa," I said, as I set my 
 big hat straight by the big pier-glass. 
 
 I couldn't help laughing to myself to think how 
 unnecessary it was for pa to preach me a little 
 sermon on such a subject. No, if ever a girl had 
 a proper sense of her own value, that girl was me, 
 Anna Maria Binks. I couldn't see the sense of 
 love in a cottage at all. It only means a nasty 
 little place full of damp and draughts, with one 
 little dirty-faced girl, or perhaps no help at all. It
 
 98 THE B1NKS FAMILY. 
 
 means a wife always grubbing after the dinner 
 and botching at her own clothes ; it means skimp- 
 ing the butter and never having cream, and not 
 daring to buy new-laid eggs, but having to con- 
 tent one's self with " fresh " ones a month old ; 
 it means back seats in chapel and mended finger- 
 ends : it means tramping along to save a bus, and 
 never daring to think of a cab ; it means inferior 
 cuts at the butcher's, and living in a bad neighbor- 
 hood. And, besides these, it means everything 
 squalid and horrid, everything screwed and 
 nipped to the last point ; it means social ruin, for 
 who can get on in society without money? It 
 means the end and death of ambition, for who can 
 hope to improve themselves one way or another 
 if they've got to be reckoning halfpennies all the 
 days of their life ? No ; no love in a cottage for 
 me ! When I marry I want a house at least as 
 handsome as Rosedale. I want a victoria of my 
 own, and a brougham fo? wet days and night-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 99 
 
 work. I want a maid and a boudoir, and a white 
 Maltese poodle, washed and combed every day, 
 with a parting right down his back showing all 
 his pretty pink skin, and a silver collar with a 
 ring of bells round his neck; and one doesn't 
 get these things with love in a cottage. I remem- 
 ber reading a story once in the Family Novelist. 
 It started quite pretty about a young girl who was 
 governess in a nobleman's family, and everybody 
 fell in love with her because of her beauty and her 
 high-bred grace. Her father had been a poor min- 
 ister, her mother an actress. She was slight and 
 fair, with great eyes like wood violets set in 
 fringes black as midnight; a sweet mouth like 
 Cupid's bow ; a dear little straight nose ; and 
 masses of waving hair like the setting sun (I sup- 
 pose it meant carroty). Of course, the noble- 
 man's son and all his friends home from college 
 fell in love with her ; but she was true to her own 
 lover, a struggling literary gentleman living in
 
 ioo THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 a garret in London on about twopence-halfpenny 
 a day (which meant only having a clean collar 
 about once a week, you know), working to make 
 a name for her. 
 
 The rich young man offered her diamonds and 
 everything that money could buy; but the girl 
 with hair like the setting sun set her face like 
 a stone, and steadfastly refused him. 
 
 " Diamonds ! " she murmured. " What are dia- 
 monds beside my own love's dear blue tur- 
 quoises ? " And then she kissed the poor little 
 ring that Lionel Trevor had denied himself food 
 to buy as a pledge of his eternal and undying 
 love ; and tears stood in the sweet violet eyes, as 
 the dew of morning pearls or the sweet wild vio- 
 lets in the hedgerows. 
 
 Now, isn't it rubbish? As if any girl in her 
 senses would ask, " What are diamonds ? " As 
 if any girl in her ordinary senses would refuse 
 a lord's- son and diamonds for the sake of a poor
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. ici 
 
 thing setting scribbling in a garret, who had to 
 go without butter and other things for weeks that 
 he might spend seventeen-and-six over a little 
 blue ring in some pawn-shop. It isn't even ordi- 
 nary common sense. I could understand a rich 
 girl like Miss Eames Eames's Food, you know 
 marrying the minister of their chapel, as she 
 did. She had such a lot of money that she didn't 
 want any more, and he was Mark Andrew Dane, 
 whose name was known as a preacher all over 
 England. To be Mrs. Mark Andrew Dane was 
 something, and as she herself thought so, she was 
 quite right to have him if she wanted. Mrs. 
 Mark Andrew Dane isn't like most popular min- 
 isters' wives, who, however popular their hus- 
 bands happen to be have to suck up to their con- 
 gregations. She doesn't care a dump what the 
 congregation thinks. She has bigger diamonds 
 and smarter carriages, and more sables and serv- 
 ants than any of them, and they spend their time
 
 102 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 sucking up to her instead of her sucking up to 
 them. But marrying like that is different to upset- 
 ting all one's family by giving one's self way cheap, 
 perhaps to a little clerk with eighty pounds a year, 
 and have to wear a black coat all the week. That 
 certainly ain't good enough at least, not for me. 
 Mrs. Leynes's house was only two roads away 
 from us. We found it quite easily a large, hand- 
 some villa, nearly as nice as Rosedale, with a red 
 lamp over the drive-gate, and a neat brass plate, 
 with " Mr. Leynes, Surgeon," engraved upon it, 
 on the gate-post. We went up the drive and rang 
 at the bell, which was answered at once by a 
 parlor-maid, just after the same pattern as our 
 Elizabeth. She replied to ma's question as to 
 whether Mrs. Leynes was at home by flinging 
 the door as wide open as it would go. I felt just 
 as I always feel in some of the West End drapery 
 shops, when a young lady, dressed in trailing 
 black silk, like a duchess, comes sailing up, and
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 103 
 
 makes you feel as if you'd crept in without leave. 
 Ma, however, never seemed to feel that. To her 
 a servant was a servant except at meals. Then 
 they worried her. 
 
 She followed Airs. Leynes's maid across the 
 entrance-hall to a room at the back of the house. 
 Then she stopped with hei hand on the knob of the 
 door, and said, "What name shall I say, ma'am?" 
 
 " Mrs. Binks," said ma, holding tight on to her 
 new silver card-case. 
 
 Then the girl flung open the door, and said in 
 a very loud, sharp voice: 
 
 " Mrs. and Miss BINKS." 
 
 There seemed to be quite a buzz of voices when 
 the door opened, but they hushed as if by magic 
 as ma and I went into the room. It was a long 
 room, with a door opening into a conservatory at 
 one side, and at the end a large window looking 
 into the garden. 
 
 Mrs. Leynes came forward to meet us. " So
 
 io 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 pleased to see you," she said cordially. " How do 
 you do, dear? Myra, here is Miss Binks. Come 
 and sit by me, Mrs. Binks. Let me make you 
 known to my sister, Mrs. Frayling. Mrs. Ham- 
 mond, this is a quite near neighbor of yours, Mrs. 
 Binks, who has just come to Rosedale." 
 
 Ma disappeared, as it were, among these ladies, 
 leaving me standing by Myra. She, however, 
 soon set me at my ease. 
 
 " I have to keep by the tea-table," she said ; " so 
 do come and sit by me. Mother hates tea brought 
 in poured out as some people have it, but when she 
 has a room full, it keeps one very busy, I can tell 
 you. How is your sister? Why didn't she come?" 
 
 I gathered from this that ma could well have 
 brought us both if she had liked. After that I 
 began to see that Polly had not wasted the three- 
 and-six she gave for "Hints." I remembered 
 one passage " When once you have mastered 
 the laws of etiquette, you will never be in doubt
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 105 
 
 what to do, and the embarrassment you suffer 
 from now will all pass away. Ease of manner is 
 not attained by carelessness, but by knowledge. 
 Knowledge is power in society as elsewhere." 
 
 There was sound common sense in that. Now 
 I knew that ma could take us both about with 
 her, so I and Polly wouldn't feel shy when we 
 went into strange rooms. " Hints " was quite 
 right knowledge is power. 
 
 Myra Leynes carried a cup of tea to ma, and 
 then took the cake-dish to her. I saw that Eliza- 
 beth had been quite right when she had set out 
 our tea-table, but the Leyneses had a much larger 
 tea-service, and the tray was silver too, and had 
 a picture in the middle of a bird standing on a 
 little bar, and then words I couldn't read under- 
 neath. Of course, I only caught a glimpse of the 
 picture on the tea-tray, and I shouldn't have 
 known what it was if I hadn't seen the same little 
 thing like a trade mark on the tea-spoon in my
 
 io6 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 saucer. I determined to look in " Hints " and 
 see why some people had letters and some people 
 had little pictures on their tea-spoons. 
 
 More and more people kept coming in, and a 
 few went out, but not many, and the room got 
 fuller and fuller, and poor Myra got busier and 
 busier, until at last I said: 
 
 " Can't I hand that cake-dish round for you ? " 
 
 " Oh, do ; There's a dear," in a tone of relief. 
 
 So I started round with the cake-dish, and 
 everybody spoke to me, and said, " Oh, thank 
 you, dear," as if I had done something wonderful. 
 I thought of " Hints " again. " Do not under- 
 rate yourself, my young reader. A bright young 
 face is always welcome, especially if you behave 
 so as to be an assistance to your hostess instead of 
 an inconvenience." I felt that Mrs. Leynes and 
 every one was pleased I had handed the cake, and 
 I made up my mind I would study " Hints " till 
 I knew every word of it by heart.
 
 .THE BINKS FAMILY. 107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 
 " Adversity tries friends as aqua fortis tries gold." 
 
 WE found Polly very poorly when we got home, 
 and that same evening ma sent for Dr. Leynes, 
 whom we hadn't seen when we called in the 
 afternoon. He came round in about a quarter 
 of an hour. And my word, if Mrs. Leynes was 
 stylish, so was he a very tall, fair man, clean- 
 shaved and thin, with hair just growing gray, and 
 a pair of coldish gray eyes. He was in evening 
 dress, too, only with a short jacket instead of a 
 cut-away coat. 
 
 If he looked cold, his manner was kind enough 
 for any one.
 
 io8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " I hope it is nothing serious, Mrs. Binks," he 
 said, taking ma's hand and holding it just as if 
 he'd known her all her life. 
 
 " Well, I hope not, doctor," says ma. " My 
 eldest girl has been ailing all day, and she seems 
 very hot and restless to-night, so I thought I'd 
 rather make quite sure by sending for you early." 
 
 "And quite right too. And will you let me 
 see her? "he said. 
 
 " Come this way, doctor," said ma. 
 
 I followed them softly. I was trembling all 
 over, for I felt Polly was going to be very ill. 
 And Polly was my only sister, my best friend. 
 Much as I loved pa and ma and the three boys, 
 it was Polly that had my heart, it was Polly I 
 simply adored. 
 
 I really loved the doctor for the way in which 
 he went into the room and walked quietly up to 
 the bed. 
 
 Well, young lady, you've sent for me very
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 109 
 
 early after taking possession of your nice new 
 house. What's amiss ? " he asked. 
 
 "I don't know, doctor," said Polly; "but I 
 feel very bad." 
 
 He asked a few questions, listened to her chest 
 through an instrument fixed to his ears, and then 
 took her temperature. 
 
 " I'll send you something round in a few min- 
 utes," he said, soothingly. " And you must try to 
 keep as quiet as you can, and drink nothing but 
 milk, with a little sodawater in it." 
 
 " I'm thirsty," said Polly. 
 
 " Yes, I dare say. Milk and soda will quench' 
 your thirst better than anything. I'll look in 
 early in the morning and see how you are. Prob- 
 ably it will all have passed away by then." 
 
 He bade her " Good night," and went out of 
 the room, ma and me following him. 
 
 " Mrs. Binks," he asked, as we reached the 
 hal!, " what kind of general health has she? "
 
 no THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Splendid couldn't be better," said ma. " I've 
 never known her to ail a thing since she had the 
 measles and the whooping-cough." 
 
 " H'm ! " He passed his finger and thumb over 
 his chin, as a man often does when he is thinking 
 hard. 
 
 " Is it anything serious, doctor ? " asked ma, in 
 a very quavering voice. 
 
 " It may pass off in the night it may be half 
 a dozen things," he said, guardedly. Then he 
 looked at ma, and said abruptly : " Mrs. Binks, 
 where do you get your milk from ? " 
 
 Ma gave a sort of moan and flung up her hands. 
 
 " I knew it I knew it ! " she cried ; then 
 turned and ran back into the boudoir, where pa 
 was set reading the evening paper. " Binks 
 Binks ! " she cried, " didn't I say I had my doubts 
 about that there milk? There's the doctor ask- 
 ing where we get it." 
 
 " Is Polly very ill ? " pa asked, all in a fright.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. in 
 
 " No, no ; but she has symptoms that may de- 
 velop into something by morning," Dr. Leynes 
 answered for her. " We doctors are very in- 
 quisitive fellows, you know, Mr. Binks, and we 
 like collateral evidence all the time as we go 
 along." 
 
 " Well, doctor," said pa, " I need 'ardly tell 
 you that my wife and me haven't built up a big 
 concern like Binks and Sons without knowing 
 pretty well what milk is. We don't happen to 
 serve this district, and perhaps that was one rea- 
 son why I bought this 'ouse, thinking my girls 
 would have a better chance if we didn't. I'll open 
 a branch in Norwood to-morrow." 
 
 " And to-night ? " ma cried quite wildly. " Dr. 
 Leynes has ordered her naught but milk, Binks." 
 
 " I'll go up to South Kensington and fetch a 
 canful ; that'll serve the night," said pa. " And 
 till we get established, they must send over night 
 and morning. Don't worry about that, old lady.
 
 ii2 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 I only 'ope Polly ain't going to suffer for my bit 
 of paltry pride." 
 
 The doctor clapped his hand down on pa's 
 broad shoulder. 
 
 " I know all about Binks and Sons," he said, 
 " and shall be glad to see you showing this neigh- 
 borhood the way round. As for pride, I wouldn't 
 give that a thought. The world is very sensible 
 nowadays, and people mostly take the positions 
 they're suited to." 
 
 " If only my girl don't suffer," said poor ma, 
 with trembling lips. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Binks, if it does turn to some- 
 thing, we must do the best we can for her," he 
 said, kindly. " I won't conceal from you that 
 something more may come. A girl does not have 
 a temperature of a hundred and four for nothing. 
 But I'll come first thing in the morning." 
 
 Our poor Polly did suffer. Ma never left her 
 that night , not for a minute. She had one of the
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 113 
 
 spare beds made up for me, and she insisted on 
 my going to bed while she kept watch. And in 
 the morning Polly was worse. 
 
 Life after that was nothing more than a hide- 
 ous dream for weeks and weeks. The house was 
 entirely given over to illness, with two nurses from 
 a great nursing home in town, the doctor coming 
 in and out all day long, the door-knocker tied 
 up, and straw laid a foot deep all along the 
 road. 
 
 We found out who were our friends then. At 
 the very first breath of what it was diphtheria 
 Rosalind came flying over from Astley Crescent. 
 
 " Oh, my poor dear ma ! " she said, catching 
 hold of mother and holding her tight " my poor 
 dear ma ! What can I do to help you ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear, you shouldn't have come ! " ma 
 cried ; " Ted shouldn't have let you. Go home, my 
 dear girl ; go home and pray for us it's all you 
 can do."
 
 ii 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Nay," said Rosalind, stoutly, " I've come to 
 stop, ma. Ted's quite willing I should. There 
 must be lots to do, and plenty of ways in which I 
 can save you. Lor', I'm not afraid ! I never catch 
 anything." 
 
 And stay she did, and the greatest comfort she 
 was to poor ma and all of us, always bright and 
 cheerful, always kind and tender with our poor 
 Polly, who went very nigh indeed to the gates of 
 heaven so close that several times we fairly held 
 our breath, thinking that she was so dazzled by 
 the radiance from within that she must leave go 
 of our loving hands and slip past the golden por- 
 tals forever. 
 
 Mrs. Leynes came every day, always alone, for, 
 as she said, she had fears for her only girl, though 
 none for herself. And then there came one bright 
 July afternoon when the doctor was in and out 
 every hour, when she came and sat on the sofa 
 by ma, and held her hand, and said all sorts of
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 115 
 
 tender, motherly things, with the tears streaming 
 down her cheeks. And poor ma was simply 
 frozen, and couldn't shed a single tear. 
 
 " I know what you are trying to tell me, Mrs. 
 Leynes," she said at last. " I saw what the doc- 
 tor meant this morning. He told you to try to 
 break it to me. He's give up hope. I know it." 
 
 " No, Mrs. Binks," said she, " my husband 
 never gives up hope while there is life. Your 
 poor girl is very, very ill ; there's no denying it ; 
 but it is the misery in your face that breaks me 
 down like this, not anything my husband has 
 said." 
 
 " Dear, kind friend," said ma, putting out her 
 hand, but otherwise keeping that same horrid 
 calm, " pray for me ; it's all you can do now. I've 
 prayed myself till I seem to be dazed, and the 
 Lord don't seem as if he meant to listen." 
 
 " He will He will," cried Mrs. Leynes, hope* 
 fully.
 
 n6 THE SINKS FAMILY. 
 
 We knew that the next few hours must decide 
 it one way or another. What a day it was ! What 
 an evening ! What a night ! Dr. Leynes was there 
 most of the time after midnight, and the two 
 nurses never stirred out of the room. Rosalind 
 never left them, and Ted came and sat with pa, 
 who alternately prayed and reproached himself 
 with his pride, now being so heavily punished. 
 Poor pa ! If ever such a punishment was unde- 
 served, it was in his case, and so Ted told him 
 over and over again. 
 
 " Don't take on like that, gov'nor," I heard him 
 say in a queer, husky voice. " It was an acci- 
 dent, pure and simple. Even if you were dead 
 sure of it's having come from the milk " 
 
 " I am dead sure," said pa, wretchedly. " And 
 Leynes, he's dead sure too. I've gone str'ight on 
 a hard-and-fast principle all my business life, and 
 then go and break it, to the risk of my own flesh 
 and blood."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 117 
 
 " She might have got it any time at the sea- 
 side, or anywhere." 
 
 " She might, but she didn't," cried pa, savagely. 
 " She got it through her father's pride and folly ; 
 and if she goes if she goes " 
 
 " She isn't going," said Ted, doggedly. 
 
 And Polly didn't go ! Toward dawn there was 
 just a slight change for the better, and then Rosa- 
 lind came down with ma, and the doctor behind 
 them. He never said a word, but walked up to 
 the sideboard, and mixed a glass of stiff brandy 
 and water. 
 
 " Drink this, Mrs. Binks," he said, holding it to 
 her lips. 
 
 " Yes ; drink it, ma, dear," said Rosalind. 
 
 " I can't," said poor ma. Her face was quiver- 
 ing and her lips were white and her chin trembled 
 so that her teeth chattered loudly. 
 
 Pa started up out of his chair ; he thought it 
 was all over.
 
 n8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Come, come," said the doctor, with cheery 
 firmness, " you musn't give way now or rather, 
 you may give way all you know. If you can have 
 a good cry, you'll be all the better for it." 
 
 Ma looked up piteously. 
 
 " Doctor," she said in a whisper, " I I " 
 
 " Yes, I know. We've had about the nearest 
 squeak for it that I have ever seen; but she's 
 got youth and strength and devoted nurses to 
 pull her round. There's every chance now." 
 
 " Then she's not not " began pa. 
 
 " Not a bit of it," the doctor returned. " A dis- 
 tinct turn for the better, and she is sleeping quite 
 naturally and peacefully for the first time since 
 her illness began." 
 
 "Thank God! My God, I thank Thee," pa 
 cried. 
 
 Then he made a step toward ma, stopped, and 
 dropped into a chair, flinging his arms out on to 
 the table, and hiding his face upon them.
 
 " THE DOCTOR TUMBLED US ALL OUT OK THE ROOM WITHOUT 
 CEREMONY." Page IIQ
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 119 
 
 Ted got up and put his arm over him. 
 
 " Don't take on so, gov'nor," he said. " Think 
 of all poor mother's gone through." 
 
 But pa sobbed on, and ma got up and went to 
 him, and put her hand into his. 
 
 " Don't, Binks," she said. 
 
 And then, somehow, he got his arm round her, 
 and she began to cry too, with her head upon his 
 shoulder. The doctor tumbled us all out of the 
 room without ceremony. 
 
 " Now, Mrs. Edward," he said, as he closed the 
 door behind us, " get this damsel off to bed, and 
 then go to bed yourself with a clear conscience. 
 Your wife's a brick, sir," he added, holding out 
 his hand to Ted. " Take care of her, for you'll 
 never get another like her." 
 
 " But " began Rosalind, looking toward the 
 
 dining-room door. 
 
 " Leave them to themselves," said Dr. Leynes. 
 " The longer they sob there the better it will be
 
 120 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 for both of them. Upon my word, I don't wonder 
 they are both broken down. It was a near shave, 
 and no mistake about it." 
 
 " But you've had nothing yourself, doctor," 
 said Ted. 
 
 " I'll get something at home," said he. 
 
 " Let me get you a cup of hot soup," put in 
 Rosalind. " Cook's sitting up in case anything 
 might be wanted, and she has it all hot and ready 
 for use, I know." 
 
 " Then take me to the kitchen to get it," said 
 he, cheerfully. " I'm never above a cup of good, 
 strong soup when it's going. Which is the way ? " 
 
 He was a wonderful man, that doctor, so high 
 and mighty one couldn't have said " no " to any- 
 thing he might choose to say, and yet with it such 
 a friendly, half-ordering, familiar kind of way 
 that one couldn't feel a bit offended. He went 
 into the big, clean kitchen that evening and drank 
 two cups of cook's strong soup, telling her it had
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 121 
 
 made him feel a man again, and that she had bet- 
 ter take a cup of it herself and then go off to bed, 
 as the worst was all over. And then he went off 
 home by the side entrance, so as not to make a 
 noise ; and then Rosalind made me go to bed, too, 
 and I was asleep as soon as my head had touched 
 the pillow.
 
 122 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE HIGHER DEPORTMENT. 
 
 " No one takes illness so badly as those who have 
 never known a day's ill health." 
 
 THAT illness of Polly's made a new creature 
 of pa. He never was quite the same again. You 
 see, in all his life before he had never had to 
 reckon much with illness. As children we were 
 all strong and well, ma never ailed anything be- 
 yond a bad cold now and again ; and pa himself 
 had never known what it was to have a single 
 day's illness. So Polly's fight at close quarters 
 with death seemed to open out an entirely new 
 set of ideas to him. He grew nervous and anx- 
 ious about us all, and used to get into a perfect 
 fever every time one of us looked a little pale or 
 had even a slight headache. As soon as Polly
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 123 
 
 was out of danger he had all the drains over- 
 hauled, but they were in the most perfect condi- 
 tion ; and at last, after infinite pains, the cause of 
 Polly's illness was traced to a cow suffering from 
 what they believed to have been diphtheria, at one 
 of the farms from which the dairy, which served 
 us, drew its supply of milk. As soon as a whis- 
 per of diphtheria, and milk as its possible cause, 
 had crept out into the neighborhood, this animal 
 had instantly been slaughtered and its carcass de- 
 stroyed, so that positive evidence was not to be 
 had. But both pa and Dr. Leynes were satisfied 
 that milk was at the bottom of it, and a splendid 
 new milk-shop was being got ready in the best 
 part of the village, with the name " Binks and 
 Sons " j>ainted over the windows. 
 
 " My pride has cost me dear, doctor," said pa, 
 " and might have cost me dearer. But it's killed 
 for all time. I haven't a shadow of it left." 
 t " You ought to be proud of such a business as
 
 124 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 yours," said Dr. Leynes. " I know I should be 
 if it were mine." 
 
 " I am I am," cried pa. " But I thought if 
 we were to live private, we might as well go out- 
 side the shadow of the shop. But it's cured me, 
 doctor ; it's cured me." 
 
 " That's right," said the doctor, clapping him 
 on the back. " We can't all of us be too thankful 
 that things have gone as they have and not as 
 they might have done. For my own part, Mr. 
 Binks, I'd rather have anything on, my hands than 
 a case of diphtheria. We don't know much about 
 it yet, we doctors, though, mind you, the day 
 won't be far distant when they'll hold it in the 
 hollow of the hand, and dread it no more than the 
 measles. But though the savants are on the track, 
 they haven't got there yet. 
 
 As soon as she was fit to travel, we all went 
 down to Eastbourne with Polly. We took one of 
 the nurses with us, and we had a spare room, so
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 125 
 
 that Ted and Rosalind could run down every 
 week which they did every Saturday after- 
 noon, staying till Monday morning. And there 
 by the sea Polly soon picked up her roses again, 
 and got strong and well as any one, even 
 pa and ma, could wish. It was the beginning 
 of October before we went home again, and I 
 think we were all very glad to be together 
 again, for pa didn't like Eastbourne any better 
 than he had liked Margate years before, or 
 any of the other seaside places where we 
 had spent our summer holidays in the years 
 between. 
 
 The very first day after we got back pa 
 got ma to go to town with him to buy some- 
 thing he wouldn't say what. Then, two 
 or three days afterwards, their purchases 
 came home a big silver tankard for Dr. 
 Leynes and a diamond ring for Rosa- 
 lind.
 
 126 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 On the tankard was engraved as follows : 
 
 TO 
 
 FREDERICK LEYNES, ESQUIRE, 
 A TOKEN OF DEEP GRATITUDE 
 
 FROM 
 
 JOSEPH BINKS. 
 
 " There, now, do you think the doctor'll be 
 pleased with that ? " pa asked triumphantly, as he 
 opened the velvet-covered, satin-lined case in 
 which it had come. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Polly. " How nice of you, 
 pa, dear ! I'm sure he'll like it awfully." 
 
 "And this is for Rosalind," said pa, handing 
 her a small case as he spoke. 
 
 " It's a sweet ring," said Polly, taking it out 
 and trying it on her own finger. 
 
 The diamonds flashed and glittered in the light 
 from the electric lamp over the dinner-table, and
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 127 
 
 Polly held her hand so as to catch all the rays as 
 they sparkled out. Inside the band was written : 
 
 "I. M. Polly, July 15, 18 ." 
 
 " What are you going to give me, pa, dear, for 
 getting better ? " said Polly, as she put the ring 
 back in its case. 
 
 " I'm going to give your mother the profits in 
 the new branch," said pa, " to put by to spend on 
 you two girls." 
 
 I drew my breath. I knew what the profits in 
 such a business as was already flourishing in 
 the village would mean. Polly sat herself down 
 on the arm of pa's chair, and twined her arm 
 round his neck. 
 
 " It's very good of you, pa, dear," she said, 
 " and Anna Maria and me'll always try to be 
 good girls, and pay you back in love, if nothing 
 else, for all you do for us. But I'd like a little 
 present bought special, dear, by yourself, just to
 
 128 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 show that you were glad to keep me when I went 
 so near going away from you all." 
 
 " Oh, my girl ! " cried pa ; " oh, my girl ! " 
 
 Somehow, I think that illness of Polly's set pa 
 against Norwood, for he never seemed to settle 
 there. At Rosedale he was always restless and 
 uneasy, always sniffing about the drains, and 
 worrying round, comparing it unfavorably with 
 the house where we had lived so long in Astley 
 Crescent. 
 
 " I'm sure the only way to ensure a perfect 
 'ouse," he declared one day, when he fancied 
 Polly was looking a bit off color, " is to build." 
 
 " They say that fools build houses for wise 
 men to live in," said ma, quietly. 
 
 " Yes ; I know they do," pa retorted. " All the 
 same, I 'ave it on my mind to try the experiment 
 for myself." 
 
 " Now, we liked Rosedale, even ma. We were 
 somebody in our set. We knew lots of nice peo-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 129 
 
 pie, and went to lots of parties, and we gave our 
 share, both summer and winter. Of course, I 
 wasn't actually ' out ' as yet ; in fact, by Mrs. 
 Leynes's advice, I attended classes in the mornings 
 at a very high-class school, where only the best 
 professors attended. Ma had to pay a pretty 
 penny, I can tell you, and Mrs. Vaughan made 
 quite a favor of what she called " making room 
 for me." But what a lot I did learn there, to be 
 sure. 
 
 Not so much out of books, you know, for, of 
 course, ma didn't care so much about that; but 
 we had to talk French all the time, and we had 
 a deportment lesson every day. I was put in the 
 very advanced class for deportment, and we went 
 through a regular course every day from twelve 
 to one o'clock. We had to learn exactly how to 
 shake hands, how to bow in the street, how to 
 enter a room, how to knock at a door; for, as 
 Mrs. Vaughan said, if a lady has no footman, or,
 
 i 3 o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 if she has, is out without him, she should be able 
 to knock at a door like a lady, and not like a little 
 dressmaker taking home a frock. 
 
 So we all practiced in turns on a large brass 
 knocker fixed outside the large door of the room 
 at the top of the house, where we did calisthenics 
 and dancing. Then Mrs. Vaughan would play 
 the maid-servant, and we would all knock in turn 
 and inquire if Mrs. Vaughan was at home. At 
 first we used all of us to find it an awfully diffi- 
 cult task ; but, after awhile, under Mrs. Vaugh- 
 an's eagle eye, we learned to be able to knock a 
 regular rat-tat-tat with a trill of little tats, and 
 one big one to wind up with, as well as any foot- 
 man in London. 
 
 Then we had to greet the hostess, to receive 
 guests, to give tea, to say good-bye, and to leave 
 the room. That done, we had to learn to enter 
 and get out of a carriage, to bow to Royalty, and 
 to go through all the ceremony of a drawing-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 131 
 
 room, each of us with a court train made of calico 
 pinned over her everyday dress. 
 
 Polly was so charmed with my description of 
 the deportment lesson that she made ma go and 
 see Mrs. Vaughan and get her to let her join the 
 class. Mrs. Vaughan rather demurred, but event- 
 ually, as I was a regular pupil, she gave way, and 
 Polly came every day at twelve o'clock and 
 learned to bow and set down, to knock and shake 
 hands, and all the rest of it. 
 
 " And, by the way, my dear girl," said Mrs. 
 Vaughan one morning to me, " what did I hear 
 you say you were going to do ? " 
 
 " To set down, Mrs. Vaughan," I replied. 
 
 " To set down what? " she asked in an awful 
 voice. 
 
 " Myself on a chair,'' I said promtly. 
 
 " You set something down on a table," said she, 
 in cold, clear accents, at which I could see several 
 of the girls sniggering, " but when you wish to
 
 i 3 * THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 rest yourself you sit down S-I-T, sit. Now, do 
 you understand ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I said so," I said very quietly. " I 
 said I was going to set down." 
 
 "Sit down S-I-T!" she exclaimed. "Sit 
 sit sit." 
 
 " Set," I said ; and really it was too silly to see 
 that silly old woman working herself up into a reg- 
 ular rage about what I said just as well as she did. 
 
 " No ; not set, but sit! " she repeated very dis- 
 tinctly. " Say after me, ' hit lit knit.' " 
 
 " ' Hit lit knit,' " I said. 
 
 "There. Now say ' pet wet bet.' " 
 
 "'Pet wet bet/ " I repeated. 
 
 " Now say, ' I am going to sit down.' " 
 
 " 'I am going to set down,' " I said. 
 
 I really did think she was going to have a fit 
 over it. 
 
 " My dear girl, you can have no ear. Say after 
 me again, ' I will go' "
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 133 
 
 " ' I will go ' " 
 
 " ' And ' " 
 
 " < And ' " 
 
 ;< 'Sit down.' " 
 
 " ' Sit down/ " I repeated. 
 
 " That's right. Now, remember, you must 
 watch yourself continually, because you have 
 picked up this little cockneyism probably from 
 your nurse, and you have got to break yourself of 
 it. It is not something that does not matter, my 
 dear girl, but will be a very serious drawback to 
 you if you do not conquer it. It is quite useless, 
 perfectly useless, studying the higher deportment 
 while you allow yourself to say ' set ' down and I 
 ' sawr ' it." 
 
 " I don't want to say anything wrong, Mrs. 
 Vaughan," I said quietly, yet with firmness. " I 
 arn most anxious to do everything just right. My 
 pa "
 
 i 3 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 She put up her hand to stop me, and waved to 
 the rest of the class. 
 
 " Young ladies, the clock has already struck 
 the hour ; you may go. Now, my dear girl," she 
 added very kindly, as the girls all trooped out, 
 leaving only me and Polly in the big room, " finish 
 what you were going to say." 
 
 " My pa " I began. 
 
 " Your what? " she said sharply. 
 
 " My pa," I repeated. 
 
 " My dear girl," she said, setting down on the 
 throne-like chair wherein she illustrated some of 
 our lessons, " no lady speaks of her pa and ma. 
 You can say ' papa ' and * mamma,' but ' father ' 
 and * mother ' is the most correct " and she said 
 it with such an air, " cor-rect " " and the most 
 distinguished in every way." 
 
 " Well, I never ! " Polly flashed out. 
 
 Mrs. Vaughan turned a pair of astonished eyes 
 full upon her.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 135 
 
 " What did you say, Miss Binks ? " she asked. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vaughan," said 
 Polly, with a blush. " But the truth was I was so 
 surprised that it slipped out." 
 
 " With young ladies things should never slip 
 out" said Mrs. Vaughan. 
 
 " But we have said ' father ' and ' mother ' all 
 our lives till quite lately," Polly explained. " It 
 was only after our Ted my brother, I mean 
 got married that we took to saying ' pa ' and 
 * ma/ because we admired our sister-in-law so 
 much. Is it really more stylish to say ' father ' 
 and 'mother/ Mrs. Vaughan? I noticed that 
 Myra Leynes does." 
 
 " It is more comme il faut, certainly," said Mrs. 
 Vaughan. " In fact, * pa ' and ' ma ' are simply 
 impossible IMPOSSIBLE." 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Polly, in rather a crestfallen 
 tone, " that Anna Maria and me have got a great 
 deal to learn."
 
 136 THE CINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF A CHANGE. 
 
 " Better the devil you do know, than the devil you 
 don't." 
 
 WHEN Polly and me went back home after that 
 lesson in the higher deportment, Polly out with 
 everything to mother. 
 
 " Oh, why didn't you send us to boarding- 
 school in Paris or somewhere so that we could 
 learn all these things ? " 
 
 " Well, my dear," said mother, in her everyday, 
 sensible voice, " I never thought of it. You were 
 girls that had always been with your mother, and 
 always hankered after her, and though you were 
 strong and well, you were, every one of you, 
 faddy about your food, and boarding-school food 
 at least, so I have always heard is what your
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 137 
 
 stomachs would have turned against. Besides, 
 your father would have missed you sadly. I had 
 to think of that, especially with such a man for 
 his home and his family as he is." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Polly, rather in a vexed 
 sort of tone ; " but father would have let us go 
 for our good, and there's so many things we 
 should have picked up that now we've got older, 
 we find difficult to keep ourselves in mind of." 
 
 " Well, my dear," said mother, " it's too late to 
 think of that now. I never liked your calling us 
 pa and ma. To me it sounds fine and horrid. And 
 you both seemed to find it easy enough easier 
 than you do now to go back to ' father ' and 
 ' mother.' " 
 
 " Ah, that was only because we were so taken 
 up with Rosalind. She has such a way with her, 
 and it sounded stylish to us." 
 
 " I'd rather myself that you'd be good and 
 natural than what you call stylish," said mother.
 
 i 3 8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " It makes me very sad to see you both thinking 
 so much of mere outside things." 
 
 " But you like us to improve ourselves," said 
 Polly. 
 
 " By all means. But will trying to be fine da 
 it ? " asked mother. " No, my dear, never, never. 
 It's the heart that makes the difference. Look at 
 your father a plain business man, honest and 
 true, with his heart big enough for half a dozen 
 men. Those that know him like him, and respect 
 him, for what he is, not because he lives at Rose- 
 dale or because he is worth so much money. For 
 my part," she went on, shaking her head, " I shall 
 never be anything but what I am, a simple wom- 
 an, who have honestly tried to do my duty in that 
 sphere of life in which it has pleased God to place 
 me. All these society fid-fads addle me. I get 
 that bothered as to whether I ought to set down 
 or stand up, that half my time I scarce know what 
 I'm doing."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 139 
 
 " But you're a lady, mother," cried I. 
 
 " Am I ? " Well, dear, I hope you'll always 
 think so," she said, smiling sweetly at me. " For 
 myself, I have my doubts about it." 
 
 " You're a saint anyway," Polly exclaimed. 
 
 Mother smiled again. 
 
 " Nay, my love, not yet," she said gently. 
 
 I've often thought about it since. 
 
 Well, Polly and I oh, how difficult I did find 
 it not to say " Polly and me," as I'd always done ! 
 Polly and I decided that as Mrs. Vaughan and 
 " Hints " tallied on most points, that we would 
 work hard at the higher deportment and lay to 
 heart every single thing that she taught us. By 
 her own wish Polly went back to school again, 
 not quite as I did, but for several special subjects 
 in which she felt herself not quite up to the mark. 
 We were very busy then. What with all we had 
 to learn, with managing our dress-allowances, 
 and keeping our various engagements, we
 
 i 4 o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 scarcely knew what it was to have a minute to 
 spare. We started a day of our own for our girl- 
 friends in our own sitting-room, which we called 
 " the Lounge," and there we used to have half a 
 dozen or a dozen girls on a Monday afternoon, 
 all as gay as a flight of birds. We had everything 
 of our very own that we had either bought for 
 ourselves out of our allowances or that father or 
 mother or the boys had given us. And we used 
 to have the best cream from the branch, and nice 
 cakes and sweets, and, what with the piano and 
 other things, our afternoons were a great success. 
 Once indeed Mrs. Vaughan herself came, and she 
 told us that we made very good hostesses, and 
 that she had never seen two girls so resolutely set 
 themselves to improve as we had done. 
 
 About this time Rosalind had a baby, and Polly 
 and I were left alone at Rosedale with father, as 
 mother went off to Astley Crescent, and stayed 
 all the time, that she might see her through it.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 141 
 
 Rosalind was rather compunctious about taking 
 mother away from home for so long, but mother 
 was firm. 
 
 " No, my dear girl, it's but a small return to 
 make you for that cruel time when you came to 
 me at the risk of your dear life, and me or mine 
 would let our tongues shrivel in our mouths be- 
 fore ever we would utter a word of complaint, no 
 matter how inconvenient it was. But, as a matter 
 of fact, it ain't inconvenient at all, for the girls 
 can do all at home quite well, and father'll see 
 me as often as ever he wants when he's up in 
 town." 
 
 " Well, dear ma," said Rosalind, " I won't hum- 
 bug by pretending I shan't like to have you with 
 me. I've no ma of my own, you know." 
 
 " My dear girl," cried mother, " but you're as 
 much to me as if you was twenty times my own 
 born and bred." 
 
 All the same, father didn't like having mother
 
 i4* THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 away. He didn't grumble he never said a word, 
 poor dear but he did worse, for he moped. And 
 it is perfectly awful to see a man mope, isn't it? 
 It must have been that that made him so restless, 
 for he got fancying things about Rosedale again, 
 sniffing here and there, and fidgeting about all 
 sorts of things in the house. 
 
 At last one day he came home to dinner evi- 
 dently with something on his mind. 
 
 " Girls," said pa, as we sat down to the table 
 and Elizabeth was serving the soup, for she had 
 started us on to having everything carried off and 
 having the housemaid in to help wait, " I've 
 done it." 
 
 " Not sold Rosedale ! " Polly cried. 
 
 " No, oh, no ; but I've bought a big place in the 
 country " rubbing his hands. 
 
 "Whatever for?" Polly asked blankly. 
 
 " To run a model dairy-farm, and to build a 
 real model house to live in," replied pa.
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 143 
 
 " Oh, how horrid ! " cried Polly. 
 
 " Well, it'll take over a year to build," said he, 
 " and at least a year to get thoroughly dry, so you 
 won't have to tear yourself away from Rosedale 
 just yet." 
 
 " Mother won't like it," Polly said stoutly. 
 
 " We shall see," he replied, nodding his head 
 wisely. 
 
 I never knew Polly so vexed in all my life. 
 
 " I can't think what's come to him," she said, 
 when we had got safely into our own bedroom. 
 " I suppose it's all that wretched illness of mine 
 last year. As if any one could have any doubt 
 but what it was just an accident. Norwood's good 
 enough for me, I'm sure, and I shall be vexed if 
 father goes and routs us out just as we've got 
 settled and happy. Mother's settled to her new 
 life and contented to be out of business. 
 
 " We aren't gone yet," I said. " A big house 
 like father is thinking of building will take a long
 
 144 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 time to build, and a longer time to get dry and fit 
 to live in. We haven't left Rosedale yet, Polly." 
 
 " No ; I hope we shan't," she rejoined, quite 
 sharply. 
 
 She was so sweet-tempered, was Polly, that I 
 guessed she must have something very particular 
 to make her so anxious to stay at Rosedale and 
 to show so much warmth about it. 
 
 " It'll be real jolly living in a big country 
 place," I ventured. 
 
 " That's as maybe," said she, quite snappily. 
 " I don't see the force of going to be snubbed 
 in the country by a lot of people we could buy up 
 over and over again. Here we do know where 
 we are; here we have lots of nice friends that 
 are all just the same sort of people as ourselves ; 
 here we don't get sniffed at because our mother 
 doesn't give herself ridiculous airs and wears her 
 hair in plain bands, or because our father smokes 
 a churchwarden and isn't ashamed of it. I tell
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 145 
 
 you, Anna, my dear, if father takes us away from 
 Rosedale, where we're well known and respected 
 for being exactly what we are, he'll make the very 
 biggest social mistake he has ever made in all his 
 life. 
 
 " We're not gone yet," I said ; for I saw Polly 
 really was vexed, and I didn't want to add to her 
 annoyance. Poor Polly ! 
 
 It wasn't so very long after that that I found 
 out why she was so keen on staying at Rosedale. 
 You see, Ted and Rosalind had a fine boy born 
 to them when the time came, and nothing would 
 satisfy father but that the christening must be 
 at the church in the Bathurst Road, and that Mr. 
 Wingfield must perform the ceremony. That 
 meant, of course, giving a great christening party 
 after, and Polly very soon persuaded mother to 
 let us have a dance in the evening by way of 
 winding up the day. 
 
 Of course, Ted and Rosalind came to stay for
 
 1 46 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 it, and the other two boys both came home 
 Georgie from Hampstead, where he was in charge 
 of a big branch, and Dicky from Putney, where he 
 had just been put over another. They were both 
 engaged, these boys, Georgie going to be married 
 very soon, though father had laid it down very 
 straight indeed that Dick should wait till he was 
 turned twenty-one before he took the final step. 
 
 Georgie was very ambitious, like father; he 
 had looked out for money. He hadn't been lucky, 
 like Ted, but Miss Haman was well off, and she 
 was a lady. Her father had been something in 
 the city, and she, Gertrude, had never been mixed 
 up with trade in any way before, and she took 
 care to let every one know it. She was years 
 older than Georgie, and no beauty at that ; but, 
 as mother said, if Georgie was satisfied, it was no 
 good for us to upset ourselves one way or an- 
 other. 
 
 Dicky might have looked higher. His young
 
 THE BTNKS FAMILY. 147 
 
 woman was a soft-eyed, flower-faced little crea- 
 ture that frankly sat at his feet and worshiped 
 him. It wasn't good for Dicky, and he bullied her 
 shamefully all the time. However, she seemed 
 so completely gone on him that she even liked 
 that, which, of course, encouraged him to keep on 
 at it in a way that made my very blood boil. I 
 dare say when you've never known what it is to 
 have a penny you haven't worked hard for, when 
 you've always lived in a poky little house, and 
 all your wildest dreams of gentility have meant 
 twenty pounds a year got by teaching little brats 
 to read and write, it does seem like heaven when 
 a handsome man comes along and puts a diamond 
 ring on your finger, and gives you flowers and 
 pretty things to wear, and offers you a good, solid, 
 substantial home, where you'll never know the 
 want of a sovereign again as long as you live. All 
 the same, I don't think if I was to marry a royal 
 duke I should ever lie down and beg him to kick
 
 i 4 8 THE SINKS FAMILY. 
 
 me as Florence Massan did every day of her life 
 to my brother Dicky. 
 
 But it wasn't through them that I found out 
 anything about Polly. Oh, no ! It was like this. 
 Rosalind, being still rather frail, was forbidden 
 to dance that night, so she sat out, and her bright 
 eyes saw a good deal more than they would have 
 done if she'd been more occupied with partners 
 herself. 
 
 " Anna," she said to me oh, yes, we had long 
 since dropped my second name, and I was always 
 called Anna now " Anna," she said, " who is 
 Polly dancing with ? " 
 
 I looked across the room to where Polly, in a 
 pretty pink frock, had just stopped to take breath. 
 
 "Oh, that's Mr. Beddingham," I said. 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 " He's on the Stock Exchange we've known 
 him a long time. His people live here, but he 
 lives in town somewhere."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 149 
 
 "You'll know him better after a time," said 
 Rosalind, dryly. 
 
 " What do you mean, Rosalind ? " I asked, a 
 sharp fear knocking at my heart. 
 
 "Mean! What, isn't it plain enough?" she 
 said, sjniling.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 " Marriage is very much the same as death, an opening 
 of a door into another world." 
 
 I MUST say at once that the affair between Polly 
 and Mr. Beddingham did not flourish over well. 
 It was so strange that we had all our lives been 
 everything to each other and yet now not one 
 single word concerning Mr. Beddingham did she 
 let drop, and, so far as that went, we might have 
 been utter strangers to one another. I believe, if 
 Rosalind had not put me up to it, that I should 
 never have seen that there was anything between 
 them ; for Polly kept so carefully away from his 
 name in her conversation as if he had been the 
 plague. It was only by a few little signs
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 151 
 
 blushes, a shyness of manner, an extra careful- 
 ness of toilet when we knew he was coming, and 
 such-like things that I saw that she looked upon 
 him any differently to all the other young men 
 that came and went at Rosedale. 
 
 Just about this time Myra L?ynes was married. 
 She made a very good match, marrying a young 
 doctor who had been her father's pupil years be- 
 fore, and who had set up as a specialist in Harley 
 Street, and had made a tremendous start even 
 there. He was young, not more than thirty, tall 
 and very good-looking, and passionately in love 
 with Myra. I didn't wonder that he was, for 
 Myra was very pretty, so tall and slight, and so 
 stylish in every way, with a way of fearing her 
 clothes, and such pretty, pretty manners. 
 
 Father and mother gave her a lovely after- 
 noon-tea and coffee service in silver, with a little 
 tray to match, as father told her that she might 
 keep us in mind every day of her life. I shall
 
 152 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 never forget the way she put up her sweet face 
 and kissed him as he wound up : 
 
 " I owe your father such a debt, my dear not 
 one that can be paid by a few bits of silver." 
 
 " She's a fine girl, that," he said to mother, as 
 we walked home, when the bride had gone away 
 and the wedding was all over. " No nonsense 
 about her." 
 
 " A dear girl," said mother. 
 
 And that was the end of Myra. After that she 
 went out of our life as completely as if she had 
 married a Chinaman. When we did meet she 
 was always the same, and when we went to see 
 her in Harley Street she showed us all over her 
 house, and was just the same sweet and pleasant 
 girl that she had always been. But somehow 
 our way never was her way after her marriage. 
 
 We had then been over two years at Rosedale, 
 and father was up to his eyes in plans about the 
 new house he was building after his own idea
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 153 
 
 down on the estate he had bought, and which had 
 now been converted into a gigantic milk-farm, ar- 
 ranged and conducted on the very newest and 
 most scientific system. The new house was not, 
 however, very forward, and had got but a little 
 way beyond the foundations ; but, as mother said, 
 it was good for him to have some other occupa- 
 tion than building up fresh businesses, and it 
 would be several years, at the present rate of 
 progress, before it would be ready for us to go 
 into. So we had all quite got to look upon Rose- 
 dale as our permanent home, and upon Dove 
 Hall as something as far off as the kingdom of 
 heaven a place to which we might go some day, 
 a some day very desirable in itself, but not to be 
 hastened by any conscious act of our own. 
 
 When I was turned eighteen, we gave a ball 
 for my coming out. It was a smart affair, I can 
 tell you, with gold cords and tassels to the pro- 
 grammes, menus for the sit-down supper, a band,
 
 iS4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 and a great marquee with a spring floor erected 
 over the lawn, and leading out of the long French 
 doors between the drawing-room and the con- 
 servatory. Then, you see, you passed through the 
 conservatory straight into the ball-room, and so 
 had plenty of space, and no rush of cold air any- 
 where. The ball was a great success, because 
 we had more men than girls, so that all the girls 
 had partners, and to spare. I never felt more 
 glad to have known Mrs. Vaughan that I was 
 that night, for all the higher deportment that I 
 had studied with her did come in so useful, and 
 I scarcely forgot anything that she had told me. 
 And that evening Mr. Beddingham proposed 
 to our Polly. I never suspected it; in fact, the 
 affair had been so long about that I had begun to 
 think of it very much as I thought of Dove Hall. 
 So when Polly came shyly up to me and said: 
 " Anna, darling, I know you'll be more glad than 
 any one that I've been made happy at your birth-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 155 
 
 day-ball," I was so taken aback that I almost 
 fainted as I stood. 
 
 "You'll wish me joy, Miss Anna?" said he, 
 with his grand air. 
 
 " Oh, yes, both of you, of course," I said at 
 once. Then I caught hold of Polly and kissed 
 her. " But your happiness, Mr. Beddingham, 
 will be a dreadful loss to me, to all of us." 
 
 " No loss at all, but a gain one brother the 
 more," he said promptly ; and really be was such 
 a grand young man, and said " broth-aw " in 
 such a tone that I almost wondered how Polly 
 had had the cheek to fall in love with him. 
 
 The next day Mr. Beddingham came quite 
 early to see father, and between them they set- 
 tled all the money side of the question. Father 
 was delighted with the engagement. 
 
 " What more could any girl want ? " he re- 
 marked. " A fine, up-standing feller like Bed- 
 dingham, six feet two in his stocking-feet, and
 
 156 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 able to make a good settlement, that, with what 
 I shall give her, will put her above poverty for 
 all the rest of her life." 
 
 But to me all the rejoicings were sad enough. 
 I was going to lose my sister, my other half. I 
 should have to sleep in a room to myself, me that 
 had shared a room with Polly, and often enough 
 a bed, for sheer love of company, ever since I 
 could remember anything. I should have the 
 lounge to myself, too. Oh, the very idea made 
 me fairly shiver, and so did the thought of the 
 first and third Monday afternoons, when all our 
 girl friends, and some of their brothers, too, came 
 to see us! Of course, I knew they would never 
 come the same when Polly was gone. 
 
 But she was so happy! I don't think I had 
 even seen a girl so utterly happy as she was. One 
 couldn't grudge her to her young man, however 
 much of a loss it might be to us. And everything 
 was rushed on at such a rate that We hadn't much
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 157 
 
 time for thinking about things. You see, they 
 had been a long time bringing it off, and now that 
 they had made up their minds, they didn't seem 
 as if they were scarce able to wait until Polly had 
 got a few clothes put together. However, on that 
 point both father and mother were firm, and they 
 insisted that they should wait at least three 
 months, so that Polly might have everything got 
 that was necessary, and would be suitable to her 
 new position. 
 
 " Such a pity Ted and Rosalind live over that 
 horrid old shop," said Polly to me about a week 
 before the wedding-day, " because it quite pre- 
 vents any of Oliver's people calling on her or 
 asking her to go and see them. I wonder, when 
 you go to Dove Hall, whether father'll give this 
 place to Ted and Rosalind ? " 
 
 " I dare say he will if they want it," I said. 
 
 " I shall suggest it to him," said Polly. " It 
 would be rather nice to have Rosalind here. She's
 
 iS THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 a nice girl, and I'm really fond of her; but - 
 well, of course, she is a bit loud; there's no de- 
 nying that." 
 
 "Oh, Polly!" I burst out. 
 
 " Yes ; I know you are thinking about my ill- 
 ness," she said, in that curious new voice of hers. 
 " She was awfully good and kind to me, and I 
 shall never forget it as long as I live, and Oliver 
 won't either. But she is a bit loud, Anna, and 
 she does lead one a bit wrong in little things. You 
 know that as well as I do." 
 
 I thought of " pa " and " ma " and half a dozen 
 other little ways in which we had thought Rosa- 
 lind so stylish, and had afterward found that she 
 hadn't been stylish at all, only different to our- 
 selves. 
 
 " Polly," I burst out, " has it ever struck you 
 that that we don't know the difference, that we 
 don't seem able to tell when it's stylish and when 
 it's only what Mrs. Vaughan calls ' quite impos-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 159 
 
 sible ? ' Didn't Mrs. Vaughan tell us the other 
 day that ' don't it ' and ' ain't it ' are just enough 
 to wreck anybody anywhere ? And yet last week, 
 when we were up at Astley Crescent, didn't Lady 
 Millicent say: 'Ain't that sweetly pretty, Mrs. 
 Binks?" 
 
 " Yes, she did ! But, all the same, Mrs. Vaugh- 
 an's perfectly right, Anna, and we owe her a lot 
 far more than we know of. It's like this it's 
 not right to say * ain't it ' and ' don't it,' and all 
 the other things that people say wrong. But a 
 woman like Lady Millicent, well in with royalty, 
 and as swagger as ever she can stick, can afford 
 to say all sorts of things that we daren't even 
 think of. If we'd been born Lady Mary and 
 Lady Anna, it wouldn't matter a bit whether we 
 talked good grammar or bad; but we are only 
 Polly and Anna Binks of Binks and Sons, and 
 we've got to mind every word we let drop. Lady 
 Millicent's there; you and me I mean, you and I
 
 160 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 aren't there yet. It's a shame, it's unjust, but 
 so it is. And it's just like this with me. I'm 
 young, I'm pretty, I'm going to marry the smart- 
 est man I've ever known in my life, and for his 
 sake and my own, to say nothing of the children, 
 if we have any, I mean to get there too before 
 I've done." 
 
 " And me too," I rejoined. 
 
 We had such a wedding! All the Bedding- 
 ham family turned up in great force, wearing 
 such clothes and giving such presents. And on 
 our side we had Ted and Rosalind, and Georgie 
 and Gertrude, who had now been engaged quite 
 a long time, and were to be married in about a 
 month's time. I think Gertrude Haman, who was 
 an aut-and-out lady, impressed the Beddingham's 
 as Rosalind, with her bright, winsome bright 
 eyes, her wide mouth, and her impulsive man- 
 ners, could never have done. But of all the 
 friends on our side who came none created such a
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 161 
 
 sensation as Lady Millicent. I don't know that 
 even Polly would have thought of asking her, but 
 she asked herself, and did it, too, in such a pleas- 
 ant way that we couldn't have got out of it if 
 we'd wanted to, which it stood to reason we 
 didn't. 
 
 And how she showed up among all the others ! 
 She was so pretty, and so friendly, and made her- 
 self so agreeable all round, and talked about " my 
 hats and tea-gowns," until scarcely a woman but 
 was wild to go up and give her an order for 
 something or other. 
 
 " Yes ; come up to Astley Crescent and have a 
 cup of tea with me," I heard her say to one group 
 of girls. " Come as a friend I won't stick you 
 if you don't want to buy anything." 
 
 She wouldn't stick them ! Why, she might 
 have charged anything she liked when she put it 
 in that way ! 
 
 " Good-bye, dear little bride," she said to Polly,
 
 i6z THE SINKS FAMILY. 
 
 as she, in a gray gown trimmed with velvet and 
 touches of gold and a great black picture-hat, 
 was taking leave. " And mind you don't forget 
 your old friends. It's a way little brides have, 
 you know." 
 
 " I shall never forget you, Lady Millicent," 
 said Polly, half shyly. " It's more likely to be the 
 other way." 
 
 " Nay ; my worst enemies couldn't say that of 
 me," said Lady Millicent, quite solemnly. " And 
 I owe your dear, kind, good mother too much ever 
 to forget her. Come and see me when you get 
 home again." 
 
 As soon as the bride had gone she left too. 
 
 " Dear, kind friend," she said to mother, " I 
 must go. My dummies. at Astley Crescent may 
 have lost half a dozen customers for me. Busi- 
 ness is business, and must be attended to. By 
 the way, what a wonderful effect of color that is. 
 Did you ever see anything like it ? "
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 163 
 
 In truth, I was quite startled by the tones of 
 color that she pointed out. For I, as chief brides- 
 maid, had carried a loose posy of yellow roses, 
 and, finding them a nuisance to carry about, had 
 put them safely by on a side-table, where I had 
 laid them down without noticing that I had put 
 them against a scarf of faded rose-colored crepe- 
 de-chine, which mother had worn over shoulders 
 at the wedding. 
 
 " Yellow roses half-blown and old rose with a 
 touch of gold," said Lady Millicent. "I shall go 
 home and immortalize the scheme at once."
 
 164 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DOVE HALL. 
 
 " It is astonishing how, when people get up in the 
 world, the ties of family affection begin to weaken." 
 
 WITHIN a year of Polly's wedding we left 
 Rosedale for ever and took up our abode at Dove 
 Hall. I was glad in one way and sorry in an- 
 other. For one thing, I was glad to start fresh 
 in a new neighborhood and on a new scale. We 
 were much, much richer than when we had gone 
 to Rosedale, and father was one of those people 
 who never grudge spending money because he 
 happened to have made it himself. 
 
 " What money fetches is what money's worth," 
 he used to say. " I 'ate people to spend what 
 they 'aven't got, nipping and screwing and pinch- 
 ing to keep up appearances ; it's little if anything
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 165 
 
 short of dishonest. But if you 'ave money, and 
 will be happier by spending it, why, you're a fool 
 to hoard it for others to spend later on." 
 
 So he spent freely and ungrudgingly, and we 
 started life at Dove Hall with a carriage and pair, 
 in addition to the brougham and victoria that we 
 had driven at Rosedale. Father still had his cart, 
 and I had a trap of my own, and a riding-horse 
 too. And mother had her own maid, though not 
 without protest all the same. 
 
 " My dear," she said, when it was first talked 
 about, "it makes me miserable to let a soul lay so 
 much as a finger on my head. She would have to 
 do my hair for me " 
 
 " Not if you didn't choose her to, mother," said 
 Polly. 
 
 Mother looked doubtful. 
 
 " Oh, well, as to that," she said, "I never did 
 see the force of keeping a dog and barking my- 
 self. I don't want a maid, and I shan't be com-
 
 1 66 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 fortable with a maid ; but if I've got to have one 
 for show, I'll not keep her to look at. I didn't 
 like Elizabeth waiting at table when we first went 
 to Rosedale, but I got used to it after a bit, and I 
 dare say I should miss it now." 
 
 So we persuaded her to start a maid, and we 
 also set up a butler and a footman when we took 
 possession of Dove Hall ; and I'm sure any one to 
 see my father sitting down every night in his 
 evening clothes, and mother in her good velvet 
 gown with its trimming of rich white lace, would 
 never have believed that he had once gone round 
 with the milk-cans, or that she had ever served in 
 the shop. 
 
 " I do feel, mother, darling," said Polly, when 
 she came down to Dove Hall for the first time 
 after we had settled in, "that you have got a really 
 comfortable house at last." 
 
 "It will be when we've got used to it," said 
 mother.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 167 
 
 " At present I feel it's too large. I like a mod- 
 est house best." 
 
 " You must have a home that you can ask us 
 all to, if you want to," said Polly. " I suppose 
 you've had heaps of callers ? " 
 
 " A good number," said mother. 
 
 " Good people? " asked Polly. 
 
 " Well, that's hard to say until we've returned 
 the calls," mother replied. 
 
 "We weren't in when they all came, Polly," 
 said I. " But I fancy it's rather a good neighbor- 
 hood. The vicar called yesterday. He's not 
 married." 
 
 " Of course, you'll go to church." 
 
 " I did think of that," said poor mother. " But, 
 you know, Polly, I have always attended the Con- 
 gregational. I I couldn't find my places." 
 
 I really couldn't help laughing at her woe-be- 
 gone expression of face. 
 
 Polly, however, took it quite seriously.
 
 1 68 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " There's nothing to laugh at, Anna," she said, 
 solemnly. "Of course, it's quite true that mother 
 never has attended church, and nobody knows the 
 service by instinct, or any service, for the matter 
 of that. As to finding her places, that's a simple 
 matter. Anna, you go up to Norwood next week 
 and see Mrs. Vaughan. She's the one woman 
 you can go to and ask about such a thing. 
 
 " But, Polly, you go to church yourself now," I 
 cried. " Why can't you show us ? " 
 
 Polly looked rather confused. 
 
 " Well, to tell you the truth," she said, with a 
 blush, " I've only been to church about three times 
 since I was married. Oliver always wants to go 
 somewhere on Sunday, and if not, he likes to laze 
 about. When I do go " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Oh, well, I look over his book, and make a 
 shot at finding the right place." 
 
 " But why don't you ask him ? He knows you
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 169 
 
 always went to the Congregational church. You 
 were married there ! " I cried. 
 
 " Yes ; I know he does," she admitted. " But I 
 never give myself away to Oliver; I don't think it 
 pays with most husbands." 
 
 Now, wasn't that cute of Polly? I looked at 
 her in profoundest admiration. I don't think any 
 of us had altered and improved as much as she 
 had done since we had launched out from Astley 
 Crescent. 
 
 " I don't think that there's much now you don't 
 know, Polly," I burst out. 
 
 " Oh, yes, there is," said Polly, promptly. 
 " And I can tell you a husband like mine is a 
 
 liberal education. Only only Oh, well, I'd 
 
 better not say that," she broke off confusedly. 
 
 " Yes, do say, Polly," I cried ; "you're at home. 
 I'm not like any one else. Do tell me." 
 
 " Well, it's it's best to know everything before 
 you get married, because when you make a good
 
 170 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 marriage in a social sense, it's rather like going 
 in for an examination, with one's heart in one's 
 mouth." 
 
 She gathered her laces together and went off to 
 her room, leaving mother and me looking at one 
 another in rather a nonplussed kind of way. 
 
 " She seems very happy and very much 
 wrapped up in him," she said. " But, for my 
 part, I could never have contented myself with a 
 husband that wasn't just on my own level. I 
 know so well what she means about having her 
 heart in her mouth. Poor child! It makes me 
 think of that story in the poem about the poor girl 
 that was wedded to a lord, and when she found it 
 out she pined away and died. Dear, dear, it's bad 
 enough to have to pick and choose one's words be- 
 fore company, but to have a company husband 
 would be like always setting on the edge of a 
 knife." 
 
 She was so sensible, was mother, she always
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 171 
 
 seemed to hit the nail on the head so well. And 
 she always took her own stand too, did mother, so 
 that even in things that she didn't know she came 
 out right, and carried her position with dignity. 
 There was a great difference between her and 
 Polly. It went against mother's conscience to 
 seem to be anything that she wasn't. 
 
 " I am what I am," she used to say, " and those 
 who want to know me must take me as I am." 
 
 Now, Polly was different to this. She was al- 
 ways playing a part, always kind of playing at 
 being a grand lady, as being a woman of position, 
 and she never seemed to want to sit down for a 
 rest. Now, I did. I was quite as ambitious as 
 Polly was, but I didn't keep it up as well. I used 
 to get tired or flurried, and then I couldn't help 
 forgetting. I used to get mad with myself, be- 
 cause one forget did such a lot of harm, and slips 
 do seem to stick so in people's minds. 
 
 However, I must get on with my story and not
 
 172 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 talk so much about myself. As I said, we were 
 settled at Dove Hall, and though we entertained 
 lavishly enough, supported all the local charities, 
 subscribed to the hunt, and started a soup-kitchen 
 for the winter, and undertook to supply all the 
 sick in the parish with invalid food, we couldn't 
 get any further socially. 
 
 True, we had lots of people on our visiting-list, 
 over thirty, and mother and I used to drive round 
 with a card-case making solemn calls and talking 
 about the weather, but though we went to a din- 
 ner now and again, or to a big garden-party 
 where nobody was introduced to anybody, we 
 never seemed to settle down as we had done at 
 Rosedale. Personally, I don't believe it pays liv- 
 ing down in the country. The game certainly is 
 not worth the candle. Of course, our estate was 
 nothing of an estate judging by the two or three 
 great, land-owners round about. Not that they 
 were the very smallest good to anybody in a social
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 173 
 
 sense excepting for opening bazaars or laying 
 foundation-stones of new schoolrooms or other 
 buildings not sufficiently important to attract 
 royalty. 
 
 Still, we had just over a hundred acres, and 
 though our house was new, we had everything in 
 the way of pleasure grounds that could well be 
 laid out in six acres of land. On one side of the 
 house the rooms opened onto a broad terrace with 
 a walk overlooking the park and with a broad 
 flight of steps at either end. We had a great 
 conservatory running all along another side of the 
 house, a marble fountain, a bowling-alley, an 
 Italian garden, a rosary, and the very best tennis- 
 court and croquet-ground that ever I played on. 
 As father said, it might be new, but it was whole- 
 some, and would bear looking into. The expert 
 gardener who laid out the grounds had so ar- 
 ranged them as to take advantage of every tree 
 that happened to be growing, and for the rest, it
 
 174 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 was no use people looking round and sneering 
 about its newness, for there weren't such roses 
 or such flowers in all the countryside. 
 
 Still, as I say, a life in the country isn't worth 
 it. Everybody came down on us like a swarm 
 of locusts. 
 
 " Now, Mrs. Binks, you must help me out with 
 my old women, or my young women, or my or- 
 phans, or my ill-used children." 
 
 We were expected to give, give, give, to buy up 
 whole stalls at bazaars, to strip our gardens and 
 conservatories for all sorts of decorations, to give 
 prizes for all sorts of shows, to provide for all the 
 needy, to be soft to the widow and the fatherless. 
 
 " You're so rich and generous, Mr. Binks," the 
 ladies used to say, when they got hold of father. 
 " You'll never miss it." 
 
 Then there were the tips of all sorts that seemed 
 absolutely necessary if we meant to be anybody 
 in country life. I'm sure at Christmas we spent
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 175 
 
 enough to have kept a family. In fact, it took 
 mother and the cook the best part of a week to 
 arrange all the hampers, for nobody must be for- 
 gotten. There was an extra large one for the 
 station-master, others for all the railway officials, 
 and we had to put on the list the post-mistress, 
 the huntsman, every one of our own laborers, all 
 the old women at the almshouses, the matron of 
 the orphanage, the parish clerk until, as father 
 said at last, it seemed as if we had left out nobody 
 excepting the minister, or, I should say, the vicar 
 of the parish. 
 
 " I've literally not had time to get a thing for 
 my relations," said mother to Polly the day before 
 Christmas Eve. " There's Ted and Rosalind, and 
 the other boys and their wives. And there's your 
 father's sisters; I've always sent each of them 
 something at Christmas-time. I must go up to 
 London first thing in the morning, and when I've 
 got what I want, I must go to Astley Crescent,
 
 176 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 and pack them there so as to get them sent off in 
 time." 
 
 " I shouldn't, mother, darling," said Polly ; 
 " you'll be utterly fagged out." 
 
 " Oh, I must," said mother ; and she looked 
 quite shocked at Polly, for she had always kept a 
 tight hold on the old customs and festivals. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you will have to buy some- 
 thing for the boys and their wives, unless you 
 like to give them a check each, to spend as they 
 like. But for Aunt Emily and Aunt Sarah, and 
 Cousin Gilbert and her children, and Marion Sel- 
 ford and all her swarm, I certainly should never 
 dream of putting myself out to buy special things 
 for them." 
 
 " My own sisters-in-law !" said mother, aghast. 
 
 " Oh, well, if they are your sisters-in-law, 
 they're very little good to you," Polly said, icily. 
 " What did you do with all those things Mrs. 
 Winton made you buy at the bazaar the last time
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 177 
 
 I was down here? Turn them all over and see 
 if you can't find things that will do very well. 
 You bought them ever so many toilet-tidies, pin- 
 cushions and pillow-shams, and some quite nice 
 pinafores, too. Surely, they're good enough to 
 send any one." 
 
 Mother rather unwillingly went to the room 
 where she kept all her stores of linen and such- 
 like, and turned out all the purchases that had 
 been forced on her at the various sales of work to 
 which we had gone. Polly made a selection 
 quickly enough. 
 
 " That for Aunt Sarah," holding up a large 
 blue-silk pin-cushion; "that for her eldest girl; 
 this pinafore for little Lotty. I'm sure, if Aunt 
 Sarah doesn't like that she ought to be ashamed 
 of herself." 
 
 " But, Polly," put in mother, "there isn't the 
 value of the hampers we sent to the laborers." 
 
 "Oh, well, as to that," said Polly, "the laborers
 
 178 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 expect it of you. Relations are different. You've 
 got to keep in with the station-master and all those 
 people. A little remembrance is all relations look 
 for/'
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE TOWERS. 
 " Prosperity does not suit everybody." 
 
 WHAT I had more than anything against the 
 neighborhood of Dove Hall was the fact a sad 
 and melancholy fact that there were no young 
 men. It is true that the Ormondes had a brother 
 and two cousins, who used to come down very of- 
 ten on Saturday afternoons to Miles Court and 
 stay till Monday morning. But they were no 
 good to me, or, indeed, to anybody but the Or- 
 monde girls, who took good care that no one else 
 had a look in where their " boys," as they called 
 them, were concerned. They said that Greville 
 Ormonde, who was eating his dinners for the 
 bar, and who looked one up and down as if one
 
 i8o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 was a filly for sale, and he didn't feel like being a 
 buyer, didn't care for dancing or for girls. 
 
 " When our brother Greville comes down, and 
 sometimes one or both of our cousins with him," 
 said Katharine Ormonde to me one day, " we 
 never can get him to show. He says he can't 
 stand the local young women anyhow after Lon- 
 don girls." 
 
 " I can quite understand that," I rejoined very 
 tartly. " I think they're so wise, because, being 
 local young men themselves, they should mix as 
 much with London people as they possibly can. 
 Of course, I've lived in London all my life, you 
 know, and what strikes me more than anything 
 else now I am down here is the horrid localness 
 of everybody. One would think, to hear some 
 of the people in the neighborhood talk, that this 
 was a foretaste of heaven, and Lord and Lady 
 Dovedale the angels with flaming swords that 
 stand at the gates."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 181 
 
 She never gave me any of her impudence after 
 that, but was quite civil and friendly. But I 
 didn't forget. I don't believe in forgetting either 
 good or bad, for neither way pays. Polly isn't 
 like that. Look how she forgot about Rosalind. 
 But there ; I mustn't start on that story to-day, or 
 else I shall never finish about Katharine Ormonde 
 and her boys. As I say, I didn't forget, and the 
 next time the Ormondes had a garden-party on, 
 with a dancing-marquee and a band, and unlimit- 
 ed strawberries and cream, and cup of all sorts, I 
 just didn't go. And I didn't pretend I had an 
 engagement either; I just didn't go. That rather 
 brought my young ladies to their bearings, for 
 they had a sale of work on at the time, and if I 
 had gone they'd have been at least ten pounds in 
 pocket, for father is so generous he always forks 
 out well when there's any sort of charity on foot. 
 
 Scarcely any of the other families had sons be- 
 sides the Ormondes. The Dwyers had two boys
 
 i8a THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 at Harrow, and the Mackenzies had a boy at 
 Eton, but they didn't exactly count, you see. 
 Then there were the Combes at Combe Stratton 
 with several sons, but all away and out in the 
 world one in Western Australia, one in Japan, 
 and the third on a tea-plantation in Ceylon. Then 
 the only son of the Mordaunts was learning to be 
 a doctor in London, and both the boys at the doc- 
 tor's were away from home altogether. Now, in 
 all these houses there were girls, and so you can 
 imagine what an Adamless Eden Dovedale was ! 
 
 Then, of course, our three boys were married, 
 and all three of them so wrapped up in their 
 wives and babies that they were no good to me at 
 all, not even to bring home other young fellows 
 to help make things hum a little. Oh, dear, take 
 it all round, my life was very grand, but it was 
 horribly dull ! 
 
 It was, therefore, natural enough that I should 
 spend a good deal of my time with Rosalind at
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 183 
 
 dear Rosedale. I might have been expected to 
 go more to Polly's, but, somehow, the atmosphere 
 of Polly's house didn't suit me like my brother's 
 did. For Polly had never been the same since 
 her marriage; she seemed so taken up with so- 
 ciety, and such a lift above all her own people, 
 that I felt kind of frozen in her company 
 
 Now, with Rosalind I always felt gay and hap- 
 py. Rosalind might be a bit loud, as Polly was 
 so fond of reminding one, but she was so bright 
 and full of fun, always ready to take a bit of 
 pleasure when occasion offered, and she was al- 
 ways the same. I don't wonde*- our Ted was as 
 wrapped up in her as he was, for she was a splen- 
 did wife to him, and never turned up her nose at 
 the business that had made us all rich and well up 
 in the world, as Polly was so fond of doing. 
 
 " Really, Rosalind," Polly said one day, when 
 she had driven over to see me at Rosedale, " I do 
 wonder you should take up with the Tompkin-
 
 i8 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 sons. They're no use to any one, tradespeople 
 like them." 
 
 " Tradespeople, indeed ! " Rosalind flashed out. 
 " And why shouldn't I know tradespeople ? 
 We're tradespeople ourselves." 
 
 " A colossal concern like Binks and Sons " 
 
 began Polly, turning absolutely scarlet. 
 
 " Pooh ! " Rosalind interrupted. " It's trade 
 all the same retail trade ! Not that I mind. I 
 married my dear old Ted because I fell in love 
 with him, though my people did think I might 
 have looked higher. I don't know that I'm any 
 better or worse for it in a social sense, but I'm 
 happy and Ted's happy, and that's the main 
 thing." 
 
 " Oh, of course, just as you like," said Polly, 
 loftily. " It's nothing to me what sort of a swim 
 you're in. If the Tompkinsons make you happy, 
 you're quite right to stick to them. What I came 
 for to-day was $9 ask you and Anna to come. to
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 185 
 
 my drawing-room tea on the 26th. I'm going to 
 be presented." 
 
 " Oh, yes, we'll come with pleasure," said Rosa- 
 lind " with pleasure. Who's going to present 
 you?" 
 
 " Lady Bunderby," said Polly, languidly. 
 " Well, I must be going. I'm so fearfully busy 
 just now. Good-bye, Rosalind, my dear. Good- 
 bye, Anna, darling." 
 
 Rosalind stood at the window watching my 
 sister get into her carriage. 
 
 " There goes a good woman gone wrong," she 
 said, with a quick sigh. " Do you know, Anna, 
 I never like to think of Polly as she was and 
 Polly as she is now." 
 
 " She has altered," I admitted. 
 
 " She doesn't seem to see the right end up of 
 things," said Rosalind. " Can't she see that get- 
 ting presented by Lady Bunderby is social 
 damnation and nothing else. I can't get present-
 
 i86 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 ed just yet I may later on when Ted's a big 
 enough tradesman ; but when I do it won't be by 
 a City woman, I can tell you. I shall get a 
 duchess to stand social godmother for me." 
 
 " A duchess ! " I stood and stared at her. 
 
 " Lor', yes, my dear ; they've all got their price, 
 every one of them," said Rosalind, with a laugh. 
 " Of course, at present, as Binks and Sons stands, 
 I couldn't go to Court, but after it's turned into a 
 company it will be another matter altogether." 
 
 We went to Polly's drawing-room tea on the 
 26th. What a show it was, and what a crowd! 
 Polly looked charming in white satin embroider- 
 ed with seed pearls, with a lot of new diamonds 
 about her, and a bouquet that was a perfect 
 dream. And Lady Bunderby was there too a 
 fat, red-faced old lady, with a hoarse voice and 
 thick red arms ; and there was a gaunt daughter, 
 whose looks had seen better days. They were 
 both awfully well dressed, with lovely jewels and
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 187 
 
 exquisite flowers, and nobody seemed to see that 
 Lady Bunderby would have looked more at home 
 in a kitchen. As for Polly, she went up like a 
 rocket after that, and got very exclusive, what 
 she called smart. I admired her for it in some 
 ways, for I was quite as ambitious as she was, and 
 I never could see the good of sitting down satis- 
 fied to be at the bottom. But Polly went too 
 far; she made herself uncomfortable, and that 
 seemed to me rather silly. 
 
 Of course, Polly had married a society man, 
 and she was quite right to live up to his position, 
 and better it if she could; but when she began 
 to pick her own flesh and blood to pieces, and to 
 perfectly fag herself out in her efforts to be 
 grand, why, that was what I call going too far, 
 and making a sacrifice of herself to no purpose. 
 
 " Now we shall be able to breathe again," said 
 Rosalind, with her gay laugh, as we came down 
 the steps of Polly's house.
 
 i88 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 It was such a big, smart house, with balconies 
 full of lovely flowers kept by contract, with a 
 garden that was tended in the same way, and 
 real lace curtains to all the windows. The day of 
 her drawing-room tea there were at least a dozen 
 footmen waiting about, so grand that they made 
 me shiver in spite of myself and of the fact that 
 we had two men-servants waiting at dinner every 
 night of our lives. Those who had been at the 
 drawing-room had great posies pinned to their 
 breasts, and looked proud enough to have been 
 royalties themselves, instead of only serving-men 
 who had waited outside. 
 
 The next day Polly drove over to see us again. 
 
 " I want you to come and stay a few days with 
 me, Anna," she said, when she had languidly 
 touched each of us on both cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, Anna can't possibly go away yet ! " cried 
 Rosalind. 
 
 Polly lifted her eyebrows.
 
 .THE BINKS FAMILY. 189 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " Because she has made several most particu- 
 lar engagements," said Rosalind, stoutly. 
 
 " How very tiresome ! " said Polly. " I espe- 
 cially wished to have her after Thursday. I 
 have several things on that she would have liked. 
 However, since you've fixed yourself up, I must 
 do without you. But what day will you come ? " 
 
 We fixed the day, and she went away, having 
 an engagement for lunch not very far away. It 
 was extraordinary how busy Polly always was. 
 She never had more than a few minutes to spare 
 when she came to Rosedale, and always had some- 
 thing or other on to which she had " positively 
 to fly." 
 
 " I'm so glad to have got you away from Rosa- 
 lind, Anna, darling," she said, when I arrived at 
 the Towers. " Of course, I know she's very 
 dear and sweet and all that, and that she makes 
 Ted a perfectly splendid wife. But seriously, she
 
 i 9 o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 is you know. And I've been so nervous 
 lest you should take up with some young 
 man in her set. You know, Anna, with your 
 looks and your money, you can look higher 
 than that." 
 
 " I don't seem to be in the way of taking up with 
 a young man in any one's set," I rejoined, with 
 a laugh. " I was twenty-one last month. I'm 
 getting on, Polly." 
 
 " Time enough," said she, nodding her head. 
 
 I am bound to say she trotted out all sorts and 
 conditions of young men for my inspection, but 
 somehow they never seemed good enough to think 
 of as being worth tying one's self to for life. I 
 liked them to dance with and to flirt with, and 
 that was all. 
 
 I had been at the Towers three days, when 
 one day, just at lunch time, Polly got a telegram 
 from Oliver. She opened it in her usual languid 
 way, but gave a great start as she grasped its
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 191 
 
 contents. Then she passed it to me, and I read : 
 
 " Bringing Lord Robert Blount down to dinner to- 
 night" 
 
 And she made such a fuss over it. A dozen 
 questions seemed to rise to her lips at once. 
 Should she get a few friends to meet him? 
 Should she wear her best white satin .gown, the 
 one she had had new the week before for Lady 
 Bunderby's ball, or should she wear the new 
 pink one that hadn't yet seen the light? Should 
 she put the champagne in ice at once, and must 
 she order fresh table flowers ? 
 
 " My dear Polly," I said, " the flowers were 
 fresh this morning. Wear your plainest black 
 evening gown. Just think over the dinner, for 
 you may be able to make one or two little im- 
 provements in the menu. Tell Walters that 'your 
 master is bringing a gentleman down/ but don't 
 say who. You can tell him what wine to have, 
 but leave the icing to him."
 
 192 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 She drew a long breath as if she were re- 
 lieved. 
 
 " You evidently don't know the importance of 
 Lord Robert Blount," she said. " He can make 
 or mar any woman. In society he is all power- 
 ful. Oh, if only Oliver had known him before 
 I got presented ! " 
 
 " It's no use getting into a flurry," I said, quiet- 
 ly. " He wants something of us, or he wouldn't 
 be coming to-night." 
 
 " You have got so detestably commercial lately, 
 Anna," Polly cried. 
 
 "All the better if I have. I'm sure if this 
 Lord Blount sees that his coming has put you 
 in flurry, he won't think half as much of you as 
 if you take him as a matter of course. And, 
 after all, who is Lord Blount when he's at home? 
 I dare say father could buy him up, and have 
 enough to spare for all of us." 
 
 "Oh, be quiet!" cried Polly, pettishly.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 193 
 
 " What's the good of pretending that such a 
 man isn't somebody important? By the by, I 
 wonder if Oliver remembered that we had asked 
 young Knipp for to-night?"
 
 i 9 4 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 REMEMBER ! 
 
 " Many excellent persons, who are quite capable of 
 comporting themselves with ease and dignity on ordinary 
 occasions, go completely astray when brought face to 
 face with unusual circumstances." 
 
 I NEVER saw Polly show to so little advantage 
 as she did that evening Oliver brought Lord 
 Blount down to the Towers. In the first place, 
 she hadn't taken my advice about her frock, but 
 was wearing the new pink gown, which was much 
 too dressy for a quiet dinner of five people. I saw 
 Lord Blount kind of run his eye over her with a 
 look of surprise and admiration mixed. 
 
 " So kind of you to let Beddingham bring me 
 down in this unceremonious fashion," he said, as 
 he took her hand. 
 
 He was a tall, light man, very fair and stylish-
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 195 
 
 looking. It would be hard to say his age, for 
 he looked very young in some lights and rather 
 old in others at least, I mean past his youth. 
 His voice was very soft and sweet, and he had a 
 curious accent, something of a drawl and some- 
 thing of a clipping of his words. Now, he was 
 a man But then, as the thought came into my 
 head, I labeled it impossible, for what Lord 
 Blount or Lord Anybody else would ever look 
 at me in that way? 
 
 " I'm delighted to see you, Lord Blount," said 
 Polly. " Let me introduce my sister to you." 
 
 He turned from her to me and took my hand, 
 holding it fast no, not fast, but with a gentle, 
 protective kind of friendliness, just as he had 
 done hers. 
 
 " I am charmed to meet you, Miss er 
 
 Miss " 
 
 . " Binks," I said. 
 
 i " Ah, yes ; now I think of it, Beddingham did
 
 196 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 tell me your name when he said I should meet 
 you this evening." Then he turned back to 
 Polly. " What a perfectly charming place you 
 have here, Mrs. Beddingham! Who would 
 think we were within driving distance of London. 
 I suppose you do drive? How long does it take 
 you to the Criterion, for instance ? " 
 
 " About half an hour sometimes less if the 
 road is clear and the horses are fresh," Polly re- 
 plied. 
 
 Then the door opened, and Walters announced 
 " Mr. Knipp." 
 
 I had never seen Mr. Knipp before. He came 
 in and straight up to Polly. 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm rather late, Mrs. Bedding- 
 ham," he said. 
 
 " If you are it doesn't matter," said Polly ; "for 
 Oliver brought Lord Blount down with him, and 
 he is gone up to dress. We are always bound 
 to give him a few minutes' grace, you know. By
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 197 
 
 the way, do you know Lord Blount? Let me in- 
 troduce you Mr. Knipp," she added to Lord 
 Blount. 
 
 " I am afraid I am only Lord Robert Blount," 
 said the guest of the evening, in a very modest 
 kind of way. "Lord Blount is my elder brother, 
 unfortunately for me in a money sense, I mean," 
 he added, all in a hurry, as a queer expression 
 came upon Polly's face, "for as a brother I am 
 devoted to him." Then he just touched Mr. 
 Knipp's hand, and turned back to me again. 
 
 A minute or two later Oliver Beddingham came 
 in, and we all stood chatting while waiting for 
 dinner to be served. Oliver Beddingham wasn't 
 in the least flurried by his grand guest. He 
 called him Blount as if he'd been a city man like 
 himself, and treated him in the most ordinary 
 manner possible. I saw that Polly was bothered 
 as to how she must address him. He had told 
 her himself that he wasn't Lord Blount, and yet
 
 198 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 Oliver called him plain Blount without any title 
 
 at all. I did wish I could have had a dip into 
 
 I 
 
 " Hints " at that moment. I should have found 
 out all about it there, I know. 
 
 It did seem a thousand pities, but in her flurry 
 Polly made such a slip a real forget. For when 
 we went in to dinner, Oliver leading the way by 
 himself, turning half round as he went, and talk- 
 ing ever so easily to Mr. Knipp and me, and 
 Polly and Lord Robert Blount bringing up the 
 rear, she went to the head of the table, and, point- 
 ing to the chair between Lord Robert Blount and 
 Oliver, said: 
 
 "You set there, Anna." 
 
 And in her flurry she never seemed to realize 
 what she had said. I caught a flicker go across 
 IxDrd Robert Blount's face, but if Oliver heard he 
 kept himself well under control. 
 
 " I think, darling, if you'll excuse me, that it 
 would be the best way, as we are such an awk-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 199 
 
 ward number as five, if Lord Robert sat on your 
 right hand instead of your left. We can't part Mr. 
 Knipp from the lady he brought in, can we ? " 
 
 " I'll alter the cover, sir," put in Walters, 
 anxiously. " I thought you would bring in Miss 
 Binks." 
 
 " As in strict politeness I ought to have done," 
 said Oliver, good-humoredly. " But when the 
 lady is a sister-in-law, it makes a very nice dis- 
 tinction whichever way one takes it, eh, Blount ? " 
 
 " I think it is all right as it is," said Lord Rob- 
 ert, smiling. 
 
 Polly was right enough when she declared that 
 it was a liberal education to be married to a hus- 
 band like hers. You see, he knew right enough 
 how to address the lord Lord Robert! Simple 
 enough when you knew. All the same, I took 
 an opportunity of making sure when Polly and 
 I left the table and the three men to enjoy their 
 cigarettes.
 
 2OO 
 
 " Polly, where do you keep ' Hints ? ' " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, I threw that away ages since ! " said 
 Polly. 
 
 " Did you ? Oh, well, you were pretty fogged 
 to-night about how to call him," I said, a little 
 sharply. " And you made an awful slip " 
 
 " Hush sh ! " cried she, with her finger to her 
 lips and looking apprehensively round. " Here's 
 Walters with the coffee. Hush sh ! " 
 
 I shut up at once, and sat idly back in my chair, 
 as Walters, followed by a footman, served us 
 with coffee and liqueurs. Then, when the door 
 closed, my sister turned eagerly to me and said : 
 
 "What did I do?" 
 
 " You said to me : ' You set there, Anna.' " 
 
 " Did I really ? Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I'm quite sure that you really did," I 
 replied ; " and what was more, Lord Robert no- 
 ticed it." 
 
 "Did Oliver?"
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 201 
 
 " I fancy not. He hid it wonderfully well if 
 he did." 
 
 " Oh, then he didn't ! That's all right," she said, 
 in a relieved tone. "As to Lord Robert Oh, 
 well, it's fearfully annoying, for it's only when 
 I'm upset and flurried that little things slip out." 
 
 " You ought to be srre on that point by this 
 time, Polly," I said, rather severely; for really 
 Polly did pick holes so in every one else. 
 
 " Yes, I ought. It only shows how careful 
 one ought to be in bringing children up. If we 
 had been sent to first-class French or German 
 schools, or both, we should never make slips of 
 that kind. But, of curse, neither father nor 
 mother, poor darlings, had any ambition beyond 
 making money, or any ideas that we should want 
 to begin where they leave off." 
 
 " They gave us a much better education than 
 either of them had, but I don't know that any of 
 us are as much of a credit to it," I remarked.
 
 202 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " It's not a question of education ; it's Oh, 
 
 well, don't let us go into that subject, Anna, un- 
 less you want me to be as cross as two sticks 
 when the men come in. Because father says he 
 ' 'ates 'oarding money/ and mother says, ' Fetch 
 me them things/ we don't love them or admire 
 and respect them any less. But it would be ab- 
 surd of us, who know better, to go on saying the 
 same when we know that it's correct to say ' hate 
 hoarding' and ' those things/ If ever I have a 
 child," Polly went on, " I shall be most particular 
 about her surroundings. I shall have a lady- 
 nurse French, if I can find one. And I shall 
 cultivate her speech and manners as the first and 
 foremost consideration." And then we heard the 
 men coming, and Polly smoothed herself down 
 into her usual society trim. 
 
 Lord Robert and Oliver both made for Polly 
 and Mr. Knipp made for me. He was big and 
 rather slow-speaking, good-looking enough, for
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 203 
 
 I was never one to care much about pretty men ; 
 I'd as soon sit and admire a wax dummy in a 
 hairdresser's window. He must have been get- 
 ting on for forty, a fine-made, well-covered 
 figure, neither too fat nor too thin. I always did 
 hate a man with a waistcoat; but then, on the 
 other hand, I do detest a hollow under the chest 
 like some men have. Now, Mr. Knipp had 
 neither one nor the other. 
 
 He was a brownish man with a heavy mus- 
 tache, and very quiet ways with him. He wasn't 
 grand like Oliver Beddingham, who somehow 
 always reminded me of that new-fashioned ma- 
 hogany one sees in the West-End furniture shops. 
 You know the kind I mean so red and smooth 
 and shining, and yet not a patch on the older kind 
 that's been rubbed and rubbed with generations 
 of oil and turpentine and elbow-grease. 
 
 " Do you sing, Mrs. Beddingham ? Are you 
 musical ? " Lord Robert asked presently.
 
 204 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " I am passionately fond of music," said Polly, 
 "but my talent lies in listening." 
 
 " And a very good talent, too," said he. " And 
 you, Miss Binks, are you a listener or not ? " 
 
 " Yes ; when I get it good enough to listen to," 
 I replied. " But I've no ambition to be a young 
 lady with a mandolin, or to sing nigger-songs to 
 a banjo." 
 
 He laughed as if I had said something out of 
 the common clever; and then Oliver said: 
 
 " But you sing, Blount. I heard you the other 
 night. It will be a perfect treat to my wife. 
 She really and genuinely loves music." 
 
 I must say it was news to me. However, of 
 course, Oliver knew Polly much better than I 
 did, so I couldn't or rather wouldn't, even look 
 my surprise. And then Lord Robert went over 
 to the piano, which was a grand, covered with 
 a lovely embroidered silk fitting cover, and loaded 
 with all sorts of knick-knacks.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. ao 5 
 
 " Let me see," he said. "I wrote a little song 
 for Lady Swansdown the other day. She's so 
 artistic a born painter, ruined by having been 
 fated to marry a marquis, and become a duchess 
 in the natural order of things. I think you would 
 like it, Mrs. Beddingham. Lady Swansdown 
 said it haunted her." 
 
 " I know I shall," said Polly, setting herself 
 deep down in her chair. 
 
 And so he began to play a sort of dreamy up- 
 and-down kind of thing, like arpeggio scales with 
 a tune running through them ; and this was the 
 song. I know the words, because he sent Polly 
 a copy, and I took them from that. 
 
 "REMEMBER !" 
 
 " Under the warm southern sky, 
 We wandered alone, you and I; 
 Hand clasped in hand as we stood 
 On the threshold of love, in the wood. 
 Oh love, will you ever forget 
 The dear days we our happiness set? 
 Remember ! Remember !
 
 2o6 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " Under the blue sky one night, 
 When the stars shone out golden and bright, 
 We sat, you and I, while our aching hearts knew 
 That for us the old love must be lost in the new. 
 Oh love, will you ever forget 
 The old days ere we parted? And yet 
 Remember ! Remember ! 
 
 " Sometimes in the lamp-light we meet, 
 And I see all the world at your feet; 
 Dear heart, do you ever remember 
 The rapture of one brief September? 
 Oh love, can you ever forget 
 The night that we passed in regret? 
 Remember ! Remember ! " 
 
 He sang it well, with a soft, harsh voice I 
 don't know if I make myself clear in saying that 
 his voice was both soft and harsh with hands 
 that seemed to drag the music out of the keys, 
 with eyes half closed, that seemed to be looking 
 back into the dim years of the past, at the other 
 end of which we could see the girl stand who had 
 to choke her love down that she might marry a 
 marquis, and one day become a duchess. 
 
 " It is too utterly sad for words," said Polly,
 
 WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF? 
 
 I'D GIVE ANYTHING TO KNOW." 
 Page 207
 
 THE SINKS FAMILY. 207 
 
 in a very soft voice. " Does it tire you to sing, 
 Lord Robert? Can you go on? I could listen 
 for ever." 
 
 I really don't know how she could she, a 
 respectable married women, with her husband sit- 
 ting by ! And for a song that had been written 
 for another married women by her old cast-off 
 lover that she hadn't thought good enough for a 
 husband ! I looked at Lord Robert, and wondered 
 he hadn't more pride, at least, than to give 
 strangers as we were the clue to his love story. 
 
 " Miss Binks," said Mr. Knipp in my ear at 
 that moment, "what are you thinking of? I'd 
 give anything to know." 
 
 " Perhaps he's proud of having been jilted by 
 a duchess," I rapped out. 
 
 He sat up quite straight. 
 
 " By jove, you are " he began, and then sud- 
 denly stopped. " I beg your pardon, Miss Binks, 
 I I I forget what I was going to say."
 
 zo8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE REIGN OF SIMPLICITY. 
 
 "A glimpse into another world, though it be only, as 
 it were, through an unconsidered chink, is often enough 
 to effect a revolution in a woman's mind." 
 
 AFTER that night we seemed to see Mr. Knipp 
 wherever we went he was everywhere. Some- 
 how I couldn't get him out of my head. I dreamt 
 about him all that first night, waking twenty 
 times at least, then dropping off to sleep again, 
 and dreaming it all over again, until I could have 
 knocked my stupid head against the bedpost. I 
 felt quite washed out in the morning and rather 
 cross ; in fact, much too cross to listen quietly to 
 my sister's vaporings about Lord Robert Blount. 
 
 " That lovely song," she said, rapturously. 
 " He has promised to send me a copy."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 209 
 
 "What for?" I asked, unfeelingly. "You 
 can't sing it." 
 
 Polly shrugged her shoulders in a fashionable 
 kind of way, as if I was getting as " impossible " 
 as all the rest of my family. 
 
 " I don't sing in company," she said, with mild 
 reproach, " because I hate amateurs unless they're 
 very, very good, and, in fact, equal to the best pro- 
 fessionals. But I often sing when I'm alone, for 
 my own amusement." 
 
 "Oh, do you really?" I returned. "Yes; I 
 heard Oliver say last night how fond you are of 
 music. When did you take up that notion ? " 
 
 " I've always loved music," said Polly, with 
 dignity. "And I should think even a stone would 
 be moved by such a lovely song as that one Lord 
 Robert sang last night. It has never been out 
 of my head since. * Remember ! Remember ! ' ' 
 
 I laughed outright. 
 
 " Oh, well, if it pleases you to like a song writ-
 
 210 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 ten for another .woman, I don't mind. I wonder 
 if Lady Swansdown, who'll be the Duchess of 
 Poultry one day, would be pleased if she knew 
 he gives her away every time he sings the song. 
 I shouldn't think she would." 
 
 " A woman of fashion like that minds nothing 
 in the way of publicity," said Polly. " But tell 
 me, you dear, cross old thing, how did you like 
 Mr. Knipp?" 
 
 " He seems nice enough," I replied guardedly. 
 
 " Oliver thinks an awful lot of him," Polly went 
 on. " He has a tremendous position on 'Change. 
 By the way, I asked him to go to the Lyceum 
 with us to-night. We have a box, you know." 
 
 It was very queer, I couldn't make it out at 
 all, but my heart began thumping like a sledge- 
 hammer at the prospect of so soon seeing him 
 again. 
 
 " So I asked him to dine here at a quarter to 
 seven, and he is going to take us all to the Golden
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 211 
 
 Grill to supper afterward. Of course, the Golden 
 Grill is the smart place for supper this season." 
 
 Mr. Knipp did dine with us, and we drove up 
 to the theater in good time for the performance, 
 and he sat next to me, and talked to me between 
 the acts, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. 
 
 Polly, on the other hand, was too much taken 
 up with the audience to pay much attention to 
 the play. 
 
 " Oliver," she said, for about the sixth time, 
 " is there nobody you know here ? " 
 
 " Not a single soul," was his reply. 
 
 " So odd," she exclaimed, in quite a vexed 
 tone, " to come to a theater and not see a soul 
 we know." 
 
 " But you didn't come to see people, Polly," I 
 put in ; " you came to see the play." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; of course. But it does seem so 
 very strange. So many people as we know, 
 too."
 
 212 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 . " I see somebody I know by sight, Mrs. Bed- 
 dingham," said Mr. Knipp at that moment. " The 
 lady Lord Robert was talking about last night 
 Lady Swansdown." 
 
 She was all eagerness in a moment. 
 
 "Oh! Where? Where? Do show me!" 
 
 " In that box opposite," said he. 
 
 Polly turned her opera-glasses straight upon 
 the occupants of the opposite box, in which two 
 ladies were sitting and several men. 
 , " Which is her ? " she asked. 
 
 " The one in black, with fair hair." 
 
 Polly gave a sort of gasp. I confess that I, 
 too, was surprised, for I had pictured Lady 
 Swansdown, the heroine of " Remember ! " as a 
 very different kind of person. She was very 
 fair, slightly haggard, but with a stylish, weird 
 kind of beauty, very stylish, if rather unearthly. 
 Her gown was like nothing I had ever seen be- 
 fore, and I flattered myself I had seen a few
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 213 
 
 gowns in my time; it made me remember my 
 advice the previous day to Polly, to wear her 
 plainest black frock. It was, as far as I could 
 see, nothing but fold upon fold of black crepe de 
 chine, which seemed to melt wherever there were 
 edges into softer frothings of chiffon. These 
 were caught up on one shoulder with a great 
 flaming sun of diamonds, and not another sign 
 of a jewel could I see about her, not even on her 
 hands, for her bare left hand was resting on the 
 edge of the box, and bore nothing but her broad 
 wedding ring. 
 
 " Very curious-looking woman, isn't she ? " 
 said Mr. Knipp. 
 
 Polly caught her breath. 
 
 " She's a perfect dream of stylishness," she 
 said, in a tone that was distinctly reproving; 
 " quite fit to be the keynote of such a song as 
 'Remember!'" 
 
 I had very hard work to keep from laughing
 
 8i4 THE B1NKS FAMILY. 
 
 aloud, and Mr. Knipp muttered, "Oh, Lord!" 
 under his breath. Really, Polly could make her- 
 self ridiculous, and often did. 
 
 Before I went home, which I did at the end 
 of the week, I saw that the reign of severe sim- 
 plicity had set in. She never put on one of her 
 best frocks, but every evening wore little simple 
 gowns that she might have put on her young; 
 daughter of fifteen had she possessed one. And 
 she left off wearing her rings, and wore nothing; 
 but a big diamond arrow on one side of her 
 bodice. And all day long she hummed or sang; 
 little snatches of Lord Robert's song, so that her 
 conversation got to be something like this 
 
 "Anna, dearest, do you happen to be writing 
 to Mother to-day? Because if you are 
 
 ' Sometimes in the lamp-light we meet, 
 And I see all the world at your feet.' 
 
 I didn't get the time there, did I ? " 
 
 " If you're going in for singing I'd take les-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 215 
 
 sons if I were you," I said unfeelingly one day. 
 
 " I think I shall," said she. 
 
 "But about Mother. Why did you want to 
 know if I was writing ? " 
 
 " Oh, I wanted you to ask her Dear me I 
 
 what was I thinking of? Let me think a min- 
 ute. 
 ' We sat, you and I, while our aching hearts knew.' w 
 
 " No, you didn't," I put in bluntly ; " you did 
 nothing of the kind. You married your first and 
 only love, and he has never looked at any one 
 else since, and neither have you. So do stop 
 that horrid caterwauling ditty, and tell me what 
 you want me to say to Mother." 
 
 Polly turned on me with a look of surprise, 
 " Really, Anna," she said, with a sudden assump- 
 tion of dignity ; " really, Anna." 
 
 She didn't ask me to prolong my visit, and I 
 was very glad of it. Even if it was rather dull 
 down in Dovedale, and some of the people round
 
 216 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 about did turn up their noses a little more than 
 nature intended, life wasn't as irritating as it 
 was at the Towers life was life, and was lived in 
 a reasonable, earnest kind of way, and not as if 
 it were all make-believe. Father and Mother, 
 though they had, bit by bit, launched out into a 
 totally different life to what they had lived be- 
 fore, did live their life off their own, so to 
 speak. And that, I believe, was why Mother 
 went down with really good people as she did. 
 You see, she never tried to make herself out one 
 tiny scrap better than she was. "You must take 
 me as I am or leave me," she said once or twice. "I 
 am glad to give you a hearty welcome to my 
 house, and a knife and fork at my table ; but as 
 for being stylish, as the girls call it, and caring 
 whether it's polite or not to take a chair without 
 asking, I really can't. My manners are old- 
 fashioned like myself." 
 
 So Mother never did anything beause it was
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 217 
 
 fashionable or etiquette or anything else. I did 
 get her to look at " Hints " once, and she sat 
 down and studied it right through just as if it 
 had been a story-book. 
 
 " Anna, my child," she said, "I should never 
 keep all this in mind never. Don't ask me to 
 go by it, for I should only get addled, and make 
 worse mistakes than if I was left in my igno- 
 rance. I'm too old to learn new ways now, my 
 dear." 
 
 And I am sure everyone liked her very much 
 better as she was, simple and dignified and natural, 
 than they would have done if she had started 
 shaking hands about the level of her eyebrows, 
 and had carefully got up the latest slang of the 
 day. Mind you, I didn't always think so. Time 
 was when I had positively blushed at Mother's 
 homeliness, and had felt that I would just have 
 given anything to have a mother that looked 
 stylish and could sail into a room and freeze peo-
 
 2 i8 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 pie if need be. But that was before Polly got 
 to be such a grand lady, and I felt it a perfect 
 relief when I found myself at home once more 
 with some one who didn't spend all her time play- 
 ing at broken-hearted duchesses. 
 
 I had been at home nearly a week when I had 
 a letter from Mr. Knipp. 
 
 "DEAR Miss BINKS" (it said), 
 
 " If it is quite agreeable to you, I should 
 very much like to come down to call on you on 
 Sunday afternoon, for the purpose of making 
 your father and mother's acquaintance, and of 
 renewing my acquaintance with you. I gather 
 from my friend Beddingham that your station 
 is only a mile or so from the house. 
 
 " Believe me, very truly yours, 
 " THOMAS HAYNES KNIPP." 
 
 . " And who is he ? " asked Mother. 
 
 " A friend of Oliver's. He's nice. You'll like 
 him," I replied. " He isn't stuck-up or silly or 
 stupid. A straight, quiet, good-looking man, a 
 gentleman, without being too grand to put his 
 foot in his mouth."
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 219 
 
 " Then you had better write and ask him to 
 come down to lunch on Sunday," Mother said, 
 her mind flying to hospitality at once. " He can 
 go by the 12.15 train from town, and we'll send 
 to meet him." 
 
 I wrote to Mr. Knipp to that effect, and he an- 
 swered joyfully accepting the invite. And then 
 if Polly and Oliver didn't send a wire late on 
 the Saturday night saying that they were com- 
 ing down by that train, and would we send to 
 meet them ? I really was vexed, and Polly made 
 such a mouthful of it too when we met and she 
 came up to my room to take off her big black 
 hat and a soft lace scarf that was bunched up 
 about her throat. 
 
 " I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw 
 the invincible bachelor waiting about on the plat- 
 form," she exclaimed. " And he quite blushed 
 when he owned that he was coming down here. 
 How came vou to ask him ? "
 
 220 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " I didn't ask him ; he asked himself to call," 
 I replied. "And then Mother said I'd better 
 ask him to lunch." 
 
 " Quite right. I shall devote myself to mother 
 all the afternoon, and give Oliver a hint to go 
 out and interest himself in cows and things. My 
 dear, I'm delighted." 
 
 It turned out that for all her fine-lady airs 
 Polly had a few grains of common sense down at 
 the bottom; for, really, she cleared out of my 
 way in the most wonderful manner. She waited 
 till Oliver had suggested, in his most new ma- 
 hogany tones, to Father that they should take a 
 turn round the farm, telling him that he was par- 
 ticularly anxious to see the little Jersey that had 
 taken first prizes everywhere that season. 
 
 Father rose to that bait at once. "I'll go 
 round with pleasure; and I tell you, sir, though 
 I say it as shouldn't, that there's not such a beauty 
 as Tender-eyed Leah to be found in the length
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 221 
 
 and breadth of the land. Milk's my business and 
 milch cattle are my hobby. She's well worth all 
 
 she's cost me, and that's " And then he took 
 
 Oliver by the arm, and led him away, still talk- 
 ing hard on the merits, perfections, and beauties 
 of Tender-eyed Leah.
 
 232 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TENDER-EYED LEAH. 
 " Faint heart never won fair lady." 
 
 WHEN Father and Oliver Beddingham had 
 gone off to see Tender-eyed Leah, Polly turned 
 to Mother, with a careless kind of air, and said 
 
 " I hope Father isn't offended at my not go- 
 ing to look at the cows. The fact is I have very 
 thin shoes on, and I'm afraid of catching a chill. 
 And besides that, I particularly want to ask you 
 something. That was why we came down to- 
 day." 
 
 " I'm sure Father doesn't mind, one way or 
 another," said Mother, smiling. " None of you 
 children can ever think you don't find your wel- 
 come waiting for you at home whenever you like 
 to come for it. It seems so queer," she went on,
 
 'THE BINKS FAMILY. 223 
 
 "how some mothers alter to their children after 
 they're married. Only the other day young Mrs. 
 Le Strange, the daughter of Miss Tellum, the 
 great novelist, was here. She lives over at Thor- 
 ganton, you know. She was telling me that she 
 wanted to run up to town for a few days to get 
 some frocks, only she didn't know whether her 
 mother could do with her. ' Perhaps her house 
 isn't very large,' said I. ' Oh, yes, it is,' she re- 
 plied ; ' it's a large house, but my mother is so 
 awfully particular about our manner to her since 
 we were married. It would be lovely if we could 
 wire up to say we were coming, but we can't. 
 We always have to write a week or so before, and 
 ask if it would be convenient to her to receive 
 us.' It seems downright unnatural," Mother 
 ended ; " for surely if there's one place in the 
 world that children, whether married or single, 
 ought to be able to go to without an invite, it's to 
 their mother's."
 
 224 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 " They say cats always turn against their kit- 
 tens when they've once left them," said Polly. 
 " And I read such a lovely, touching article the 
 other day by Miss Tellum on mother love. Well, 
 Mother, darling, none of yours will ever pain you 
 in that way. And now, I want to carry you off, 
 dear, so perhaps Anna will show Mr. Knipp 
 round the gardens and look after him a little." 
 
 Mr. Knipp got up, and, with a little bow, de- 
 clared that the main object of his life was to 
 see the Dove Hall gardens. So he and I went 
 off together, and left Mother and Polly to have 
 their chat undisturbed. 
 
 We went out by the front door, and along the 
 terrace, down the steps, and into the rosary. I 
 showed him everything. Never was a garden 
 better shown, for I missed not a point, and neither 
 did he; he was as good a sightseer as I was a 
 showman. We went all through the houses, and 
 then through the stables, although, being Sun-
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 225 
 
 day afternoon, only one of the boys was to be 
 seen. And after that I asked him if he would 
 like to go down and see the swans and the new 
 Canadian ducks on the ornamental water which 
 ran at the foot of the wilderness. 
 
 There was a queer little summer-house at the 
 very end of the water, a funny little place that 
 had been put there at the suggestion of the land- 
 scape gardener as being a pleasant, cool spot for 
 smoking in, or for afternoon tea in hot weather, 
 or for resting in in winter when the water was 
 frozen over and we should all be skating upon 
 it. As a matter of fact, we never had used it at 
 all, for Father was a chilly soul, and liked his 
 pipe in his own den and in his own big easy- 
 chair better than anywhere else. " I wasn't bred 
 up to smoking my pipe like a nobleman," he 
 used to say, when I hinted that he never made 
 use of his grand smoking pavilion. As for 
 Mother, well used as she had got to her new life,
 
 226 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 with a butler to carve her dinner and a maid to 
 dress her hair, the one thing she could not get 
 used to was having meals out-of-doors. She ob- 
 jected to the horrid insects that always seemed to 
 be dropping about in the garden. So we, not 
 having any ice, never had used the little pavilion 
 by the water, and I don't know that I had ever 
 sat down in it before until I went in with Mr. 
 Knipp, and he proposed that we should rest a bit 
 and look over the sunlit water, on which the 
 swans and ducks were all swimming about in per- 
 fect happiness. 
 
 " It's awfully jolly here, Miss Binks," he said, 
 when we had thoroughly discussed the water and 
 the ducks and the pavilion. 
 
 "Yes; isn't it?" I rejoined. 
 
 " You didn't think it a great piece of cheek on 
 my part asking myself down, I hope?" 
 
 " Oh, no, not at all. We were delighted to 
 see you," I replied.
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 227 
 
 " It was awfully nice of your mother to ask 
 me to lunch, too," he went on. " How very nice 
 she is ! And your father, too." 
 
 " Oh, do you really think so ? " I exclaimed, 
 rather impulsively. 
 
 " Yes, by Jove, that I do. I do like a man to 
 be thoroughly interested in his life's business and 
 to be expert at his own work, no matter what it 
 is. One can see that your father is heart and 
 soul in his Jerseys." 
 
 " Oh, he is, Mr. Knipp," I went on, all in a 
 hurry. " I'm so glad you like my father and 
 mother. I can't bear people who turn up their 
 noses at them because they're not fine lady and 
 gentleman. They're both so good and so gener- 
 ous and so genuine, and every day I live I admire 
 and respect and love them more for being just 
 what they are." 
 
 " And, by Jove, you've every cause to," he 
 cried admiringly. " You don't know just how
 
 228 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 I feel about these things. Look here, I came 
 down to-day with a special reason. I've a story 
 to tell you and a question to ask you. People 
 often wonder why I've never married. I'm rich, 
 very rich, as perhaps Mrs. Beddingham has told 
 you. She has often chaffed me about my single 
 
 state, because Oh, well, as he has often put 
 
 it, I might marry a duke's daughter. That's all 
 rot, you know, for duke's daughters don't go 
 around begging, and they don't, as a rule, marry 
 City men. But seriously, I dare say I might 
 have married over and over again, but for one 
 reason " 
 
 "That is ?" 
 
 " I never cared to tell the story of my life to 
 any woman before I met you," he said simply. 
 
 "And you will tell it to me?" 
 
 " If you will listen. Miss Binks, what first at- 
 tracted me to you was something you said about 
 your father. Fathers and mothers have a great
 
 HIS VOICE DROPPED ALMOST TO A WHISPER. Page 22Q
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 229 
 
 attraction for me. I never knew my mother, for, 
 poor girl, she died when I was only two days 
 old. As for a father, I never had one." His 
 voice dropped almost to a whisper, and a dull 
 burning red color overspread his face. But his 
 eyes, blue and resolute still, looked straight into 
 mine. 
 
 " Why have you told me this ? " I asked. My 
 voice, like my hands, was trembling. 
 
 " May I say why ? Oh, surely you understand 
 that you, with your clear, sensible mind, you, with 
 your happy home-life, with your good-hearted, 
 honest, loving married father and mother, have 
 attracted me as I have never known what it was 
 to be attracted by any woman in all my life. 
 Anna, will you have me? I'm not your equal," 
 he added, very humbly " but will you have 
 me?" 
 
 " My dear," I said gently, " I'm the proudest 
 girl in England this day."
 
 2 3 o THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 And so we got engaged, Tom and I. I made 
 him tell me everything that he knew. How he 
 had been brought up at a respectable farmhouse 
 in the country; how a mysterious guardian law- 
 yer had sent him to a good school, had paid all his 
 clothing bills, given him ample pocket-money; 
 and how, at eighteen, he had been sent for to this 
 lawyer's office, and had then been told the tragedy 
 of his birth and his poor little mother's death. He 
 had been told that he would be well started in 
 life, and that the rest would depend on himself. 
 He had begged to know the name of his father, 
 but was told that this could never under any 
 circumstances be disclosed. 
 
 From that moment he had vowed that he would 
 prove himself worthy of his betrayed mother and 
 of his hard-hearted father. He had deliberately 
 chosen to become a member of the Stock Ex- 
 change, not because his way had been thrown 
 much among City men, but because he believed
 
 THE BINKS FAMILY. 231 
 
 stock-broking to be a profession at which he 
 could rise to great fortune and power. His wish 
 had been acceded to instantly. He had been en- 
 tered as a pupil at a great stock-broking house, 
 he was told that four hundred a-year would be 
 his allowance until he came of age, and that when 
 he was ready to find a partner, the necessary 
 money would be forthcoming; and this after- 
 wards proved to be no more than the truth. 
 
 And to-day Knipp and Bartle was one of the 
 most solid and respected firms in all the city of 
 London, and he had asked me to be his wife. 
 
 " I think, dear Tom," I said, " that we'll tell 
 Father and Mother ; but as to the others, I don't 
 see that's any business of theirs. Do you ? " 
 
 "I don't care in the least now," he said. " They 
 are your people; you must do just as you like 
 about it." 
 
 " Well, then, we'll keep it just to ourselves and 
 them," I said. " And now if you want to make
 
 23 2 THE BINKS FAMILY. 
 
 Father very happy you'll come in to tea I heard 
 the bell ring and then you'll ask him to take 
 you to see Tender-eyed Leah." 
 
 THE END.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 ' "*" fillflllff ffllJi