diosyncrasy like other things. Some people keep clear
of it miraculously, some seem to drop into it without cause or meaning,
and to spend all their lives afterwards in vain attempts to get out. Mr.
May was one of these unfortunate men. He could not tell himself where
his money went to. Poor man! it was not so much he had, and there was a
large family to be fed and clothed, and schooled after a sort. But still
other people on incomes as small as his had managed to maintain their
families without dropping into this hopeless condition. He had been in
debt since ever he could remember; and to be sure it was not the pain
and trouble to him that it is to many people. So long as, by hook or by
crook, he could manage to stave off the evil day, so long was he happy
enough, and he had managed this by all sorts of semi-miraculous
windfalls up to the present time. James's remittances had been like
heavenly dew to him. It is true that these remittances had been intended
to keep Reginald at Oxford, and perhaps something of the special
hardness with which he regarded Reginald arose from the fact that he had
done him wrong in this respect, and had appropriated what was intended
for him. But after all, he had said to himself, the maintenance of the
house in comfort, the keeping clean of the family name, and the staving
off disagreeable revelations of the family's poverty, were more, for
even Reginald's comfort, than a little more money in his pocket, which
everybody knew was very dangerous for a young man.

Mr. May had always a bill coming due, which James's remittances arrived
just in time to meet. Indeed, this was the normal condition of his life.
He had always a bill coming due--a bill which some good-humoured banker
had to be coaxed into renewing, or which was paid at the last moment by
some skilful legerdemain in the way of pouring out of one vessel into
another, transferring the debt from one quarter to another, so that
there may have been said to be always a certain amount of quite
fictitious and visionary money floating about Mr. May, money which
existed only in the shape of symbol, and which, indeed, belonged to
nobody--which was borrowed here to-day, and paid there to-morrow, to be
re-borrowed and repaid in the same way, never really reaching anybody's
pocket, or representing anything but that one thing which money is
supposed to be able to extinguish--debt. When human affairs reach this
very delicate point, and there is nothi