An awkward pause ensued before she asked timidly: "Do you feel very tired to-night?"

"To the depths of my soul, child!" Then, fearing lest he had startled her with his violence, he added: "I've had -- and still have -- great worries, my dear . . . business worries."

"Is it the practice, Uncle? Doesn't it do well?"

"That, too. But I have made a sad fool of myself, Emmy -- a sad fool. And now here I sit, puzzling how to repair the mischief."

Alone again, he let himself fall back into the limp attitude in which she had surprised him. It was well-being just to lie back, every muscle relaxed. He came home from tramping the streets dog-tired, and all of a sweat: as drained of strength as a squeezed lemon.

No one else appeared to disturb him. Emmy, bless her! had done her work well, and Mary might now reasonably be expected to leave him in peace. Let them jig and dance to the top of their bent, provided he was not asked to join in. He washed his hands of the whole affair. From the outset, the elaborate preparations for this party had put his back up. It was not that he wanted to act the wet-blanket on his children's enjoyment. But the way Mary went about things stood in absolutely no relation to his shrunken income. She was striving to keep pace with people who could reckon theirs by the thousand. It was absurd. Of course she had grown so used, in the latter years, to spending royally, that it was hard for her now to trim her sails. Just, too, when the bairns were coming to an age to appreciate the good things of life. Again, his reason nudged him with the reminder that any ultra-extravagance on her part was due, in the first place, to her ignorance of his embarrassments. He had not enlightened her . . . he never would. He felt more and more incapable of standing up to her incredulous dismay. In cold blood, it seemed impossible to face her with the tidings: "The house we live in is not our own. I have run myself -- run you and the children -- into debt to the tune of hundreds of pounds!" At the mere thought of it he might have been a boy once more, standing before his mother and shaking in his shoes over the confession of some youthful peccadillo. A still further incentive to silence was the queer way his gall rose at the idea of interference. And it went beyond him to imagine Mary not interfering. If he knew her, she would at once want to take the reins: to manage him and his affairs as she managed house and children.