"Well," Hazel declared, after a pause, "I shall give up trying to make money in that way. My only real gift is music. There is no doubt about it, that I should never make an author. If only people would hire me to sing at little concerts. You know what a success I am at the school concert at Christmas-time, and how old Jonathan Higgins would walk ten miles to hear 'My mother bids me bind my hair,' as I sing it. I am thinking of that five pounds, old fellow," she added dismally.
"Yes, by Jove!" Teddie rejoined, and relapsed into silence. "Since my rise," he began presently, "I have been in constant difficulties. It is always the way. When you have not a halfpenny, you do nothing and go nowhere."
Hazel nodded. She longed to ask her brother to what extent he had broken through this wise régime, but held her peace.
"I date my difficulties from the day when I gave a champagne lunch to five fellows I know."
"The day of the rise?" his sister asked shrewdly, awed by this peep into dissipated life.
"You have got it," Teddie admitted. "It may have been foolish, but the fellows have stood me treat often enough—or offered to—and my usual answer, that I did not go in for society because I could not afford to do my part, did not always work, you know. I got talked over. Since then," he continued, "I have stood a theatre or two, and—well, the long and short of it is, that Mrs. Walters, our landlady, wants her rent, and is beginning to make a nuisance of herself."
Hazel thought of the ten pounds that she had bestowed on her uncle's servant; but, troubled as she was for her brother, she could not repent her of the deed.
"You can't borrow of Hugh or Gerald?" she ventured gently.
"No," Teddie told her. "We have once for all agreed not to borrow from each other, and it is not a bad plan: for though it is dashed hard luck that I am bound down not to borrow of them, I am thankful to think they cannot borrow of me," he added ruefully.
"Yes," Hazel returned, struck with the sense of this, "that certainly is a good thing. Well," she added, "you must let me think it well over. I will do my best, Teddie, to help you."