'I suppose he'll show up some time to-night unless Dick keeps him. But
he can't do that, neither, unless he makes him sleep on the sofa in
their sitting-room. A nice come-down for my lady, to be living in two
furnished rooms! But it's my belief they're not so badly off as they
pretend to be. It's all very well for Dick to put on his airs and go
about saying he's given up every farthing; he doesn't get me to believe
that. He wouldn't go paying away his pounds so readily. And they have
attendance from the landlady; Mrs. Adela doesn't soil her fine finger's,
trust her. You may depend upon it, they've plenty. She wouldn't speak a
word for us; if she cared to, she could have persuaded Mr. Eldon to
let me keep my money, and then there wouldn't have been all this law
bother.'

'What bother's that?'

'Why, Dick says he'll go to law with my husband to recover the money he
paid him when we were married. It seems he has to answer for it, because
he's what they call the administrator, and Mr. Eldon can compel him to
make it all good again.'

'But I thought you said you'd given it all up?'

'That's my own money, what was settled on me. I don't see what good it
was to me; I never had a penny of it to handle. Now they want to get all
the rest out of us. How are we to pay back the money that's spent and
gone, I'd like to know? Willis says they'll just have to get it if they
can. And here's Dick going on at me because we don't go into lodgings!
I don't leave the house before I'm obliged, I know that much. We may as
well be comfortable as long as we can.

'The mean thing, that Adela!' she pursued after a pause. 'She was to
have married Mr. Eldon, and broke it off when she found he wasn't going
to be as rich as she thought; then she caught hold of Dick. I should
like to have seen her face when she found that will!--I wish it had been
me!'

Alice laughed unpleasantly. Her mother regarded her with an air of
curious inquiry, then murmured:

'Dick and she did the honest thing. I'll say so much for them.'

'I'll be even with Mrs. Adela yet,' pursued Alice, disregarding the
remark. 'She wouldn't speak for me, but she's spoken for herself, no
fear. She and her airs!'

There was silence; then Mrs. Mutimer said:

'I've let the top bedroom for four-and-six.'

''Arry's room? What's he going to do then?'

'He'll have to sleep on the chair-bedstead, here in the kitchen. That
is, if I have him in the 'ouse at all. And I don't know yet as