steady she caught them one in the other. "I have been talking it over with
my children, and we have decided, if you approve, to take a good-sized
house by the sea, where we could all live together, and take in lodgers.
That would be a way of making a living which would come easier to my girls
and me than any other."

"Easier? Yes. The misfortune is, ma'am, that the things which are easier
in the beginning are always difficult to finish up. We'll begin the other
way round, if you please." He bit the nail a minute longer, looked at it,
put it out of sight behind his coat tails. "Ah no; that scheme won't do at
all," he said, quite pleasantly. "I know these lodgings, and the miserable
women who keep them, and can only make ends meet by thieving the lodgers'
mutton. The groshery line is altogether on another shelf. You and your
daughters can not only make a living at it, you can make money. Make
money."

Mrs. Day lifted her head, tried to capture something of her old bearing,
tried to get a note of firmness into her voice. "I do not really think I
could keep a shop," she said. "Above all, a grocery shop. I could not
undertake it, Mr. Boult; and I am sure the girls would not like it at all;
nor my son."

"What then?" he asked her, very quiet.

"I think my own plan. The house by the sea. We should escape from
Brockenham, which we much wish to do; we should begin again where
we--where our story--is not known. For the children's sake it would be
best. For us all it would be more--suitable."

"But I have told you, ma'am, the plan is out of the question." He turned