Her mother signed to her to be silent, frowning and shaking her head and
glancing at her father. He got up suddenly and left the room.

"He's worrying himself to death about Mr. Hancock," she said.

"I didn't know he cared for him like that, Mamma."

"Oh, well, he's known him thirty years, and it's a very dreadful thing he
should have to give up his house."

"It's not worse for him than it is for Papa."

"It's ever so much worse. He isn't like your father. He can't be happy
without his big house and his carriages and horses. He'll feel so small
and unimportant."

"Well, then, it serves him right."

"Don't say that. It _is_ what he cares for and he's lost it."

"He's no business to behave as if it was Papa's fault," said Harriett. She
had no patience with the odious little man. She thought of her father's
face, her father's body, straight and calm, and his soul so far above that
mean trouble of Mr. Hancock's, that vulgar shame.

Yet inside him he fretted. And, suddenly, he began to sink. He turned
faint after the least exertion and had to leave off going to Mr. Hichens.
And by the spring of eighteen eighty he was upstairs in his room, too ill
to be moved. That was just after Mr. Hichens had bought the house and
wanted to come into it. He lay, patient, in the big white bed, smiling his