"You know what your father is, Bessie. So often irritable at home when
things have gone wrong at the office. Go to your room till your tears are
dry; I will see your father and find out if there is anything to tell you."

Mr. Day was in the room they called the breakfast-room. Looking upon it
with the housewife's desire for neatness Mrs. Day often spoke of it as the
Pig-sty, but it was the room they all of them loved best in the house. It
was here the children learned their lessons for school, the ladies worked,
Franky played. It was spacious and cheerful, and held nothing that rough
usage would spoil. All the most comfortable chairs in the house were pulled
up to the hearth, upon which Franky's cats were allowed to lie, and
Bernard's dog. A canary, Deleah's especial protegee, hung in the window.

Mr. Day had pulled a chair too small for his huge bulk in front of the
fire, and sat, looking huddled and uncomfortable, his feet drawn up beneath
his chair, his knees dropped, staring at the bars.

"Is anything the matter, William?" his wife asked. "Aren't you going out
again, this evening?"

Every night of his life, except the Sunday night, when on no account would
he have missed going to church with his family, he went to a club in the
town where whist and three-card loo were played--for higher stakes, it was
whispered, than most of its members could spare.

"You have taken off your boots, William: aren't you going to your club?"

"No; I'm not going to my club."

"In heaven's name why?"