he tale. He could not sleep again. Lying stiff as a log so as not to disturb Mary, he hailed each fresh streak of light that crept in at the sides of the blinds or over the

only little by little, line by line, assuming its true shape. Faithfully the toilet-glass gave back each change in the room's visibili

R fill it?" Himself he stood by dumbfounded, as he watched her busy with tape and measure: truly, he had never thought of this. She had toiled, dear soul, for weeks on end, stitching at curtains and draperies to try to clothe the nakedness - in vain. If they had not had his books to fall back on, the place would have been uninhabitable. But he had emptied the whole of his library into it, with the result that books were everywhere: on the stair-landings, in the bedrooms; wherever they could with decency stop a gap. Another incongruity was the collection of curios and bric-a-brac garnered on their travels. This included some rare and costly objects, which looked odd, to say

folly. Instead, the daylight by now being come, he lay and totted up pound to pound until, for sheer weariness, he was ready to dro

y as the sparrows: their tongues wagged without a stop. And though he came down with the best intentions, he soon found his nerves jarred.

xpect children to sit

hispering, or the loud, hissing noise children make in its stea

sters must learn music went without saying. But the walls of the house had proved mere lath-and-plaster; and the tinkle of the piano, the sound of childish voices and Mary's deeper tones, raised in one-two-threes and one-two-three-fours, so distracted him that it took him all his time to turn up and make notes on his cases for the day. By rights,

ifty pounds: a hundred and fifty! Nor was this wretched sum a certainty. It came from shares that were to the last degree unstable - in old days he had never given them a thought. And against this stood the sum of eight hundred pounds. Oh! he had grossly over-estimated his faculty for self-deception. Now that he was in the thick of things, it went beyond him to get this debt out of his m

disappointment that he had only managed to secure two paltry lodges. Every general practitioner knew what THAT meant. He had built on lodge-work: not only for the income it assured, but also to give a fillip to the private practice. Again, not expecting what work there was to be so scattered, he had omitted to budget for horse hire, or the hire of a buggy. This made a real hole in his takings. He walked wherever he could; but calls came from places as far afield as Kew and Camberwell, which were not to be reached on foot. Besides, the last thing in the world he could afford to do was to knock himself up. Even as it was,

turning-in on himself. Mary no doubt hit the mark, when she blamed the months of morbid solitude to wh

wn better than to le

Richard with his way and his name to make, a practice to build up, connections to form; and, instead of taking every hand that offered, he kept up his "Ultima Thule" habits

latter years, to nail himself down to fixed hours and live by the clock. He complained, too, that his memory wasn't what it used to be. Names, now. If he did

ed his hat and hunted for his gloves. "Now have you your case-book? And is everything in your bag

my thermometer . . . now where the dickens have I

way, Richard, I wonder if you'd mind leavin

it fair to bother me with that kind of th

off, and I can't spare cook. You've jus

thousand and

en must go that way for their walk - thoug

ildren everlastingly to

for a man of his age and appearance to be seen tramping the streets, bag in hand. But she might as well have talked to a post. The only answer she got was that he couldn't afford it. Now this was surely imagination. She flattered herself she knew something about a practice, and could tell pretty well what the present one was likely to throw off . . . if properly nursed. To the approximate three hundred a year which Richard admitted to drawing from his dividen

horse and buggy, you can at least give a

wn affairs! I don't want a horse and trap, I tell you. I prefer to go on as I am." And, with that,

am

ot Mamma would say: "Run away, darling, and don't bother me. I've no time." But Cuffy badly wanted to know something. An

pa poke his head ou

ow older." Even the child, it seemed, cou

growing old -

teeth, and not being able to g

it h

not, litt

es Eliza? And why has he alwa

boy! He carries things in

want to mak

and good things to eat. But come . . . jump down! A

hand in his mother's, reluctantly dragged and shuffled a fo

d. "I'm afraid you'll be forgetting how to ride. I must talk to

lly, trul

fy hopped from side to sid

nd not to be able to ride, and ride well, too, in a country like this, might prove a real drawback to them in after life. Now she had p

they would never forget, what they missed, never make good. But she could hope for no help from Richard; manlike, he expected graces and accomplishments to spring up of themselves, like wild flowers from the soil. Everything depended on her. And she did not spare herself. Thanks to her skill with her needle, they w

ation of seeing children younger than Cuffy and his sisters able to answer quite nicely at spelling and geography, while hers stood mutely by. In the Dumplings' case it did not greatly matter: they were still just Dumplings in every sense of the word; fat and merry play-babies. But Cuffy was sharp for his age; he could read his own books, and knew long pieces of poetry by heart. It see

ments and trifles. True, she walked where she had driven, hired less expensive servants, rose betimes of a morning, but who shall say whether these changes were wholly drawbacks in Mary's eyes, or whether the return to a more active mode of life did not, in great measure, outweigh them? It certainly gave her a feeling of satisfaction to which she had long been a stranger

perplexed: "Not ask Lizzie? Put off the Devines?" she discovered, to her amazement, that it was not alone his morbid craving for solitude that actuated him: the house, if you please, formed the stumbling-block! Because this was still unpapered and rather scantily furnished, he had got it into his head that it was not fit to ask people to; that he would be looked down on, because of it. Now did ANYONE ever hear such nonsense? Why, half the houses in Melbourne were just as bare, and nobody thought the worse of them. People surely came to see you, not your furniture! But he h

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