plainer fare than I; but her children made her prudent.

At last the one thing happened which made her prudence coincide with
her desires; one of the children sickened with a languor that was the
precursor of disease, and the doctors said that only country air could
bring back strength. And then fate itself took the whole matter out of
my control. Something happened in the city--I know not what--and the
firm I served came near to shipwreck. Business shrank to a diminished
channel, and the staff of clerks must needs be reduced. I have said
some hard words of my employer as the exploiter of my labour; he will
appear no more in this history, and my last word about him shall be
justly kind. He broke the news of his misfortune to me with a delicacy
that made me respect him, and with a hesitating painful shame that made
me pity him. He praised me beyond my merit for my twenty years of
service; he had hoped to keep me with him for another twenty years, and
I believe he spoke the truth when he said it pained him to think that
his misfortunes should be mine. He handed me in silence a cheque for
fifty pounds. He then shook my hand heartily, murmured some vague
words about hoping to reinstate me if things should mend, and hurried
from me; and in his broken look and bowed shoulders I read the prophecy
that his days of fortune and success were gone for ever. The little
tragedy was played out in less than ten minutes. I locked my desk, put
on my hat and coat, and went out into the street; and my heart felt a
pang at leaving the place which I should never have imagined possible.
I had walked fully half a mile before another thought occurred to me.
My blood suddenly sang in my veins, and I remembered that I was an
emancipated slave; at last I was Free!