listen for full five minutes to the lies of that woman; then to the
insufferable remarks of that cad, that swindler, Hilary Margerison, who
I firmly believe had an infectious disease which I have no doubt caught,"
(he was right; he had caught it). "Then in comes Peter and insults me to
my face and tells me to clear out of the house. By all means; I have done
so, and it will be for good. What, Lucy? There, don't cry, child; they
an't worth a tear between the lot of 'em."

But Lucy cried. She, like Peter, was oddly not herself to-day, and cried
and cried.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE BREAKING-POINT


The boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long illness ended in
natural death. There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no
self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs
were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'--people who couldn't
pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies. As
two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the
profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house
world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable.

All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the
Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza