That was indeed what he liked to hear: the connexion was not direct, but one was somehow more in the right place where the money was flying than where it was simply and meagrely nesting.

The air felt that stir, he had to acknowledge, much less at Chalk Farm than in the district in which his beloved so oddly enjoyed her footing.

She gave him, she could see, a restless sense that these might be familiarities not to be sacrificed; germs, possibilities, faint foreshowings--heaven knew what--of the initiation it would prove profitable to have arrived at when in the fulness of time he should have his own shop in some such paradise.

What really touched him--that was discernible--was that she could feed him with so much mere vividness of reminder, keep before him, as by the play of a fan, the very wind of the swift bank-notes and the charm of the existence of a class that Providence had raised up to be the blessing of grocers.

He liked to think that the class was there, that it was always there, and that she contributed in her slight but appreciable degree to keep it up to the mark.