little you eat you had better have good."

"Fourpence-halfpenny!" he repeated, and fell into profound meditation,
from which he broke with a sudden return of anger. "What a double-dyed
villain and robber that infernal woman has been! She told me that prices
had risen to such a height that the commonest salt butter was
eighteenpence a pound, that every chop was a shilling, that--that--"
Then breaking off, with an air of the deepest pathos he exclaimed:
"Thirty shillings a week I gave her to keep the house, and she has left
the butcher unpaid for six months. But _I_ will not pay him. He shall
suffer. Why did he trust her? What did you pay for these things?" he
ended, abruptly, in a high key.

Katherine silently handed him the back of a letter on which she had
scribbled down the items.

"What is the use of showing me this, when I cannot read--when I have no
glasses?" he exclaimed, impatiently.

"True. I must try and find them for you. Where did you first miss them?"

"Oh, I don't know. I had them on when I went to see that----woman out
of the house."

Calling Susan to assist in the search, Katherine looked carefully in the
hall, but in vain, when her young assistant gave a cry of joy; she had
almost trodden on them as they lay between a mangy mat and the foot of
the stairs.

The recovery of his precious glasses did more to soothe the ruffled