st expect to get their
share of the other."

Jan jumped off his bough. His projects all appeared to be failing. The
more he had dwelt upon his suddenly-thought-of scheme, that Dr. West's
house might afford an asylum for Lionel and his wife, the more he had
become impressed with its desirability. Jan Verner, though the most
unselfish, perhaps it may be said the most improvident of mortals, with
regard to himself, had a considerable amount of forethought for the rest
of the world. It had struck him, even before it struck Lionel, that, if
turned out of Verner's Pride, Lionel would _want_ a home; want it in the
broadest acceptation of the word. It would have been Jan's delight to
give him one. He, Jan, went home, told Miss Deb the news that it was
John Massingbird who had returned, not Frederick, and imparted his views
of future arrangements.

Miss Deb was dubious. For Mr. Verner of Verner's Pride to become an
inmate of their home, dependent on her housekeeping, looked a formidable
affair. But Jan pointed out that, Verner's Pride _gone_, it appeared to
be but a choice of cheap lodgings; their house would be an improvement
upon that. And Miss Deb acquiesced; and grew to contemplate the addition
to her family, in conjunction with the addition Jan proposed to add to
her income, with great satisfaction.

_That_ failed. Failed upon Jan's first hint of it to Mrs. Verner.
She--to use his own expression--flew out at him, at the bare hint; and
Sibylla Verner could fly out in an unseemly manner when she chose.

Jan's next venture had been with John Massingbird. That was failure the
second. "Where are they to go?" thought Jan.

It was a question that Lionel Verner may also have been asking in his
inmost heart. As yet he could not look his situation fully in the face.
Not from any want of moral courage, but because of the inextricable
confusion that his affairs seemed to be in. And, let his moral courage
be what it would, the aspect they bore might have caused a more hardy
heart than Lionel's to shrink. _How much he owed he could not tell_;
nothing but debt stared him in the face. He had looked to the autumn
rents of Verner's Pride to extricate him from a portion of his
difficulties; and now those rents would be received by John Massingbird.
The furniture in the house, the plate, the linen, none of it was his; it
had been left by the will with Verner's Pride. The five hundred pounds,
all that he had inherited by that will, had bee