chen, but
Fanny gave a despairing glance around her, in search of one, then sank
abruptly, and sat flat upon the floor.

"You're going to leave me in the lurch!" she gasped.

"What on earth--" George sprang to her. "Get up, Aunt Fanny!"

"I can't. I'm too weak. Let me alone, George!" And as he released the
wrist he had seized to help her, she repeated the dismal prophecy which
for days she had been matching against her hopes: "You're going to leave
me--in the lurch!"

"Why no, Aunt Fanny!" he protested. "At first I'd have been something
of a burden on you. I'm to get eight dollars a week; about thirty-two
a month. The rent's thirty-six dollars a month, and the table-d'hote
dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the
rent--eighteen dollars--I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary
to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons.
You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd
be paying more of the expenses than I would."

She stared at him with such a forlorn blankness as he had never seen.
"I'd be paying--" she said feebly. "I'd be paying--"

"Certainly you would. You'd be using more of your money than--"

"My money!" Fanny's chin drooped upon her thin chest, and she laughed
miserably. "I've got twenty-eight dollars. That's all."

"You mean until the interest is due again?"

"I mean that's all," Fanny said. "I mean that's all there is. There
won't be any more interest because there isn't any principal."

"Why, you told--"

She shook her head. "No, I haven't told you anything."

"Then it was Uncle George. He told me you had enough to fall back on.
That's just what he said: 'to fall back on.' He said you'd lost more
than you should, in the headlight company, but he'd insisted that you
should hold out enough to live on, and you'd very wisely followed his
advice."

"I know," she said weakly. "I told him so. He didn't know, or else he'd
forgotten, how much Wilbur's insurance amounted to, and I--oh, it seemed
such a sure way to make a real fortune out of a little--and I thought I
could do something for you, George, if you ever came to need it--and it
all looked so bright I just thought I'd put it all in. I did--every cent
except my last interest payment--and it's gone."

"Good Lord!" George began to pace up and down on the worn planks of the
bare floor. "Why on earth did you wait till now to tell such a thing as
this?"

"I c