"I don't get on," Mr Croy almost gaily replied.

His daughter took in the place again, and it might
well have seemed odd that in so little to meet the
eye there should be so much to show. What showed
was the ugliness so positive and palpable that it
was somehow sustaining. It was a medium, a set
ting, and to that extent, after all, a dreadful sign
of life; so that it fairly put a point into her answer.
"Oh, I beg your pardon. You flourish."

"Do you throw it up at me again," he pleasantly
inquired, " that I ve not made away with myself?"

She treated the question as needing no reply; she
sat there for real things. " You know how all our
anxieties, under mamma's will, have come out. She
had still less to leave than she feared. We don't
know how we lived. It all makes up about two hun
dred a year for Marian, and two for me, but I give
up a hundred to Marian."

"Oh, you weak thing! " her father kindly sighed.

"For you and me together," she went on, " the
other hundred would do something."

"And what would do the rest?"

"Can you yourself do nothing?"
x He gave her a look; then, slipping his hands into
his pockets and turning away, stood for a little at
the window she had left open. She said nothing
more she had placed him there with that question,
and the silence lasted a minute, broken by the call
of an appealing costermonger, which came in with
the mild March air, with the shabby sunshine, fear-

[[14]]

p013 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p014w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p015

v?