"You did not use to be up so late, in the old days."
"Don't think it's the best time either; but--you must do as the rest of the world do; swim with the--what is it?--swim with the current."
"How if the current goes the wrong way?"
"Can't help yourself; you must go along, if you are in it."
Dolly was silent, finishing her luncheon. She ate fast and hurriedly.
Then she pushed her chair away and came round and sat upon her father's knee; laying one arm round his neck and looking into his face.
"Father," she said in her clear, musical voice, sweet as a bird's notes,--"father, suppose we get out of the current?"
"What current do you mean? It makes a great confusion to try to have your meals at a different hour from the rest of the world."
"I don't mean that, father."
"What have you come up to town for?"
"To see about it," said Dolly, with a smile that dimpled her cheeks most charmingly, and covered the anxiety she did not want to show.
"To see about what? Dolly, you are grown a woman."
"Yes, father."
"And, I declare you're a beautiful woman, child. It's time we were thinking of getting you married."
"You're not in a hurry, are you, father?"
"In a hurry!" said Mr. Copley, gazing at her admiringly. "Why, yes. I want you to be married while you can choose your place in the world, and enjoy it when you have got it. And you can choose now, Dolly."
"What, sir?"
"Your husband."
"But, father," cried Dolly, while her cheeks covered themselves with the most brilliant roses, "I cannot choose what is not presented to my choice!"
"No, child; take what _is_. That's what I am thinking of. Good enough too. Don't you like the ticket you have drawn?"
"Father," said Dolly, turning the tables now on her side, and laying her face in his neck, "I wish you would have nothing to do with lotteries or gaming!"
"I have nothing to do with lotteries, child."
"But with gaming?"
"What put such a thing into your head?"
Dolly hesitated, strained him a little closer in her embrace, and did not answer directly.
"Father, I wish you would!"
"What folly are you talking, Dolly?" said Mr. Copley angrily. "You are meddling with what you do not understand."
But Dolly only clung closer, and having once broken the ice would not now give back. She must speak now.
"Father," she said, half sobbing, yet commanding the sobs down, "we are getting ruined. We are losing each other. Mother and I live alone--we do not see you--we are poor--we have not money to pay our dues--mother is not getting better--and I am breaking my heart about her, and about you. O father, let us come and live together again."
Dolly got no answer to this outburst, and hardly was conscious that she got none, she was so eagerly trying to swallow down the emotion which threatened to master her voice. Mr. Copley had no answer ready.
"Father," Dolly began again, "mother wants to travel; she wants to go to Venice. Suppose we go?"
"Can't travel without money, Dolly. You say we haven't any."
"Would it cost more to travel than to live as we are living?"
"You say we cannot do that."
"Father, do _you_ say so?"
"I am merely repeating your statements, Dolly, to show you how like a child you talk."
"Answer me as if I were a child then, father, and tell me what we can do. But _don't_ let us go on living as we are doing!"
"I thought I had done the very best thing possible for your mother, when I got her that place down at--I forget what's the name of the place."
"Brierley."
"I thought I had done the very best thing for her, when I settled her there. Now she is tired of it."
"But father, we cannot pay our way; and it worries her."
"She is always worrying about something or other. If it wasn't that, it would be something else. Any man may be straightened for cash now and then. It happens to everybody. It is nothing to make a fuss about."
"But, father, if I cannot pay the servants, _they_ must be without cash too; and that is hard on poor people."
"Not half so hard as on people above them," replied her father hastily.
"They have ways and means; and they don't have a tenth or a hundredth as many wants, anyhow."
"But those they have are wants of necessary things," urged Dolly.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" said Mr. Copley, with as much of harshness in his manner as ever could come out towards Dolly. "I cannot coin money for you, well as I would like to do it."
"Father, let us take what we have got, and go to Venice! all together.
We'll travel ever so cheaply and live ever so plainly; only let us go!
Only let us go!"
"Think your mother'd like travelling second-class?" said Mr. Copley in the same way.
"She wouldn't mind so very much; and I wouldn't mind it at all. If we could only go."