and bother?--In short, if I don't get something
from somewhere, in a few months I shall be in Queer Street. What chance
is there of the parson's dying?"

"It don't matter much to you when he dies, I expect," said she, "for
you may depend that those that's got hold of him won't let his money
come into your hands. He's altered his will, you may depend on it."

"Do you really think so?"

"I should think it more probable than not. You see that old matter with
the Bank is known all over the country, although they don't seem
inclined to push it against you, for some reason. Yet it's hardly
likely that the Vicar would let his money go to a man who couldn't be
seen for fear of a rope."

"You're a raven, old woman," he said. "What am I to do?"

"Give up play, to begin with."

"Well?"

"Start some business with what's left."

"Ha, ha! Well, I'll think of it. You must want some money, old girl!
Here's a fipunnote."

"I don't want money, my boy; I'm all right," she said.

"Oh, nonsense; take it."

"I won't," she answered. "Give me a kiss, George."

He kissed her forehead, and bent down his head reflecting. When he
looked up she was gone.

He ran out of the booth and looked right and left, but saw her nowhere.
Then he went sulkily back to his wife. He hardly noticed her, but said
it was time to go home. All the way back, and after they had reached
their lodgings, he kept the same moody silence, and she, frightened at
some unheard-of calamity, forbore to question him. But when she was
going to bed she could withhold her anxiety no longer, and said to him:

"Oh, George, you have got some bad news; let me share it with you. If
it is anything about my father, I implore you to tell me. How is it I
have got no answer to the letter I wrote a month ago?"

He answered her savagely: "I don't know anything about your father, and
I don't care. I've got bad news, d----d bad news, if that will make you
sleep the sounder. And, once for all, you'll find it best, when you see
me sulky, not to give me any of your tantrums in addition. Mind that."

He had never spoken to her like that before. She went to her bed
crushed and miserable, and spent the night in crying, while he went
forth and spent the night with some of his new companions, playing
wildly and losing recklessly, till the summer morning sun streamed
through the shutters, and shone upon him desperate and nigh penniless,
ripe for a fall lower than any he had had as yet.