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“He’ll pawn the clock and anything else he can lay his hands on, and when he’s drunk it up come home to be made a fuss of,” continued Mrs. Berry, heatedly; “that’s you men.”

Her glance was so fiery that Mr. Joseph Piper was unable to allow the remark to pass unchallenged.

“I never pawned a clock,” he said, stroking his little grey head.

“That’s a lot to boast of, isn’t it?” demanded his niece; “if I hadn’t got anything better than that to boast of I wouldn’t boast at all.”

Mr. Piper said that he was not boasting.

“It’ll go on like this, my dear, till you’re ruined,” said the sympathetic Mrs. Berry, turning to her friend again; “what’ll you do then?”

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Cox. “I’ve had a bad season, too, and I’m so anxious about him in spite of it all. I can’t sleep at nights for fearing that he’s in some trouble. I’m sure I laid awake half last night crying.”

Mrs. Berry sniffed loudly, and Mr. Piper making a remark in a low voice, turned on him with ferocity.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“I said it does her credit,” said Mr. Piper, firmly.

“I might have known it was nonsense,” retorted his niece, hotly. “Can’t you get him to take the pledge, Mary?”

“I couldn’t insult him like that,” said Mrs. Cox, with a shiver; “you don’t know his pride. He never admits that he drinks; he says that he only takes a little for his indigestion. He’d never forgive me. When he pawns the things he pretends that somebody has stolen them, and the way he goes on at me for my carelessness is alarming. He gets worked up to such a pitch that sometimes I almost think he believes it himself.”

“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Berry, tartly, “you’re too easy with him.”

Mrs. Cox sighed, and, leaving the room, returned with a bottle of wine which was port to the look and red-currant to the taste, and a seedcake of formidable appearance. The visitors attacked these refreshments mildly, Mr. Piper sipping his wine with an obtrusive carefulness which his niece rightly regarded as a reflection upon her friend’s hospitality.

“What Cox wants is a shock,” she said; “you’ve dropped some crumbs on the carpet, uncle.”

Mr. Piper apologised and said he had got his eye on them, and would pick them up when he had finished and pick up his niece’s at the same time to prevent her stooping. Mrs. Berry, in an aside to Mrs. Cox, said that her Uncle Joseph’s tongue had got itself disliked on both sides of the family.

“And I’d give him one,” said Mrs. Berry, returning again to the subject of Mr. Cox and shocks. “He has a gentleman’s life of it here, and he would look rather silly if you were sold up and he had to do something for his living.”

“It’s putting away the things that is so bad,” said Mrs. Cox, shaking her head; “that clock won’t last him out, I know; he’ll come back and take some of the other things. Every spring I have to go through his pockets for the tickets and get the things out again, and I mustn’t say a word for fear of hurting his feelings. If I do he goes off again.”

“If I were you,” said Mrs. Berry, emphatically, “I’d get behind with the rent or something and have the brokers in. He’d look rather astonished if he came home and saw a broker’s man sitting in a chair–“

“He’d look more astonished if he saw him sitting in a flower-pot,” suggested the caustic Mr. Piper.

“I couldn’t do that,” said Mrs. Cox. “I couldn’t stand the disgrace, even though I knew I could pay him out. As it is, Cox is always setting his family above mine.”

Mrs. Berry, without ceasing to stare Mr. Piper out of countenance, shook her head, and, folding her arms, again stated her opinion that Mr. Cox wanted a shock, and expressed a great yearning to be the humble means of giving him one.