t; I'm going now."

"You and I, Mary, have always affected a good deal of indifference as
to money, and all that sort of thing."

"I won't acknowledge that it has been an affectation at all," she
answered.

"Perhaps not; but we have often expressed it, have we not?"

"I suppose, uncle, you think that we are like the fox that lost his
tail, or rather some unfortunate fox that might be born without one."

"I wonder how we should either of us bear it if we found ourselves
suddenly rich. It would be a great temptation--a sore temptation. I
fear, Mary, that when poor people talk disdainfully of money, they
often are like your fox, born without a tail. If nature suddenly
should give that beast a tail, would he not be prouder of it than all
the other foxes in the wood?"

"Well, I suppose he would. That's the very meaning of the story. But
how moral you've become all of a sudden at twelve o'clock at night!
Instead of being Mrs Radcliffe, I shall think you're Mr Aesop."

He took up the article which he had come to seek, and kissing her
again on the forehead, went away to his bed-room without further
speech. "What can he mean by all this about money?" said Mary to
herself. "It cannot be that by Sir Louis's death he will get any of
all this property;" and then she began to bethink herself whether,
after all, she would wish him to be a rich man. "If he were very
rich, he might do something to assist Frank; and then--"

There never was a fox yet without a tail who would not be delighted
to find himself suddenly possessed of that appendage. Never; let the
untailed fox have been ever so sincere in his advice to his friends!
We are all of us, the good and the bad, looking for tails--for one
tail, or for more than one; we do so too often by ways that are
mean enough: but perhaps there is no tail-seeker more mean, more
sneakingly mean than he who looks out to adorn his bare back with a
tail by marriage.

The doctor was up very early the next morning, long before Mary was
ready with her teacups. He was up, and in his own study behind the
shop, arranging dingy papers, pulling about tin boxes which he had
brought down with him from London, and piling on his writing-table
one set of documents in one place, and one in another. "I think I
understand it all," said he; "but yet I know I shall be bothered.
Well, I never will be anybody's trustee again. Let me see!" and then
he sat down, and with bewildered look recapitulated to himself