'Must I go to Edward Street?'
'Yes.'
'What am I to say? I've never been there before.'
'Well, it's high time as ye began to look after your own property. You mun see owd Price, and tell him ye canna accept any excuses.'
'How much does he owe?'
'He owes ye a hundred and twenty-five pun altogether—he's five quarters in arrear.'
'A hundred and——! Well, I never!' Anna was aghast. The sum appeared larger to her than all the thousands and tens of thousands which she had received in the morning. She reflected that the weekly bills of the household amounted to about a sovereign, and that the total of this debt of Price's would therefore keep them in food for two years. The idea of being in debt was abhorrent to her. She could not conceive how a man who was in debt could sleep at nights. 'Mr. Price ought to be ashamed of himself,' she said warmly. 'I'm sure he's quite able to pay.' The image of the sleek and stout superintendent of the Sunday-school, arrayed in his rich, almost voluptuous, broadcloth, offended her profoundly. That he, debtor and promise-breaker, should have the effrontery to pray for the souls of children, to chastise their petty furtive crimes, was nearly incredible.
'Oh! Price is all right,' her father remarked, with an apparent benignity which surprised her. 'He'll pay when he can.'
'I think it's a shame,' she repeated emphatically.
Agnes looked with a mystified air from one to the other, instinctively divining that something very extraordinary had happened during her absence at school.