not eat, she hardly spoke, but she was better, she said.

The children would have to know; but she could not bring herself to tell
them. That their father was not in the house they did not perceive, but
put down his absence from the breakfast-table to the fact that he had
over-slept himself.

A great fire blazed on the hearth. A stack of muffins was being kept warm
in a silver dish on a brass stand before it. Fish, and broiled kidneys
were on the table; a ham, and a brawn, and a glazed tongue on the
sideboard. Mrs. Day always drank coffee at her breakfast, Deleah liked
cocoa, the rest took tea; all three were served.

Mrs. Day surveyed these signs of comfort and luxury with a numb feeling at
her heart. All this, and such as this, would have to go. How would the
children endure life without it. Was this lavish amount of food
"extravagance"? she asked herself, for the first time. Was it possible
she, with her well-filled table on which she had prided herself, had
conduced to the misfortune? She was a woman whose conscience was very
easily touched, and she began to blame herself. "But I never dreamed!" she
said, "I never dreamed!"

Bessie could eat neither fish nor kidneys, that morning. "Mama, there was
some game-pie left, last night. Mayn't I have some of it?"

The servant was rung for to bring the game-pie. "If there are any oyster
patties we might have them in, mother," Bernard suggested.

The mother, sadly gazing, assented. Nothing would she have denied them,
that morning--her poor children who were so soon to be deprived of