hen it's quite certain 'Arry won't be any the better for
fancying himself rich. H's going to give us trouble as it is, I can see
that. We shall have to take another house, of course, and we can't keep
them from knowing that there's money fallen to me. But there's no need
to talk about the figures, and if we can make them think it's only me
that's better off, so much the better. Alice needn't go to work, and I'm
glad of it; a girl's proper place is at home. You can tell her you want
her to help in the new house. 'Arry had better keep his place awhile.
I shouldn't wonder if I find work for him myself before long I've got
plans, but I shan't talk about them just yet.'

He spoke then of the legal duties which fell upon him as next-of-kin,
explaining the necessity of finding two sureties on taking out letters
of administration. Mr. Yottle had offered himself for one; the other
Richard hoped to find in Mr. Westlake, a leader of the Socialist
movement.

'You want us to go into a big house?' asked Mrs. Mutimer. She seemed to
pay little attention to the wider aspects of the change, but to fix
on the details she could best understand, those which put her fears in
palpable shape.

'I didn't say a big one, but a larger than this. We're not going to play
the do-nothing gentlefolk; but all the same our life won't and can't be
what it has been. There's no choice. You've worked hard all your life,
mother, and it's only fair you should come in for a bit of rest. We'll
find a house somewhere out Green Lanes way, or in Highbury or Holloway.'

He laughed again.

'So there's the best of it--the worst of it, as you say. Just take a
night to turn it over. Most likely I shall go to Belwick again to-morrow
afternoon.'

He paused, and his mother, after bending her head to bite off an end of
cotton, asked--

'You'll tell Emma?'

'I shall go round to-night.'

A little later Richard left the house for this purpose. His step was
firmer than ever, his head more upright Walking along the crowded
streets, he saw nothing; there was a fixed smile on his lips, the smile
of a man to whom the world pays tribute. Never having suffered actual
want, and blessed with sanguine temperament, he knew nothing of that
fierce exultation, that wrathful triumph over fate, which comes to men
of passionate mood smitten by the lightning-flash of unhoped prosperity.
At present he was well-disposed to all men; even against capitalists and
'profitmongers' he could