 expressed no desire to number Jasper among his
acquaintances in town, and of his own professional or private concerns he said
not word.
    »Whether he could be any use to me or not, I don't exactly know,« Jasper
remarked to his mother and sisters at dinner. »I suspect it's as much as he can
do to keep a footing among the younger tradesmen. But I think he might have said
he was willing to help me if he could.«
    »Perhaps,« replied Maud, »your large way of talking made him think any such
offer superfluous.«
    »You have still to learn,« said Jasper, »that modesty helps a man in no
department of modern life. People take you at your own valuation. It's the men
who declare boldly that they need no help to whom practical help comes from all
sides. As likely as not Yule will mention my name to someone. A young fellow who
seems to see his way pretty clear before him. The other man will repeat it to
somebody else, A young fellow whose way is clear before him, and so I come to
the ears of a man who thinks Just the fellow I want; I must look him up and ask
him if he'll do such-and-such a thing. But I should like to see these Yules at
home; I must fish for an invitation.«
    In the afternoon, Miss Harrow and Marian came at the expected hour. Jasper
purposely kept out of the way until he was summoned to the tea-table.
    The Milvain girls were so far from effusive, even towards old acquaintances,
that even the people who knew them best spoke of them as rather cold and perhaps
a trifle condescending; there were people in Wattleborough who declared their
airs of superiority ridiculous and insufferable. The truth was that nature had
endowed them with a larger share of brains than was common in their circle, and
had added that touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the restrictions of
poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the painful reserve which
characterises a certain clearly defined class in the present day. Had they been
born twenty years earlier, the children of that veterinary surgeon would have
grown up to a very different, and in all probability a much happier, existence,
for their education would have been limited to the strictly needful, and -
certainly in the case of the girls - nothing would have encouraged them to look
beyond the simple life possible to a poor man's offspring. But whilst Maud and
Dora were still with their homely
