ed hurriedly, "What do you mean?" without
reflecting that to ask for private information from a servant about my
father's habits was as bad as investigating into a stranger's affairs. It
did not strike me in the same light.

"Mr. Philip," said Morphew, "a thing 'as 'appened as 'appens more often
than it ought to. Master has got awful keen about money in his old age."

"That's a new thing for him," I said.

"No, sir, begging your pardon, it ain't a new thing. He was once
broke of it, and that wasn't easy done; but it's come back, if you'll
excuse me saying so. And I don't know as he'll ever be broke of it
again at his age."

I felt more disposed to be angry than disturbed by this. "You must be
making some ridiculous mistake," I said. "And if you were not so old a
friend as you are, Morphew, I should not have allowed my father to be so
spoken of to me."

The old man gave me a half-astonished, half-contemptuous look. "He's been
my master a deal longer than he's been your father," he said, turning on
his heel. The assumption was so comical that my anger could not stand in
face of it. I went out, having been on my way to the door when this
conversation occurred, and took my usual lounge about, which was not a
satisfactory sort of amusement. Its vanity and emptiness appeared to be
more evident than usual to-day. I met half-a-dozen people I knew, and had
as many pieces of news confided to me. I went up and down the length of
the High Street. I made a small purchase or two. And then I turned
homeward, despising myself, yet finding no alternative within my reach.
Would a long country walk have been more virtuous? It would at least have
been more wholesome; but that was all that could be said. My mind did
not dwell on Morphew's communication. It seemed without sense or meaning
to me; and after the excellent joke about his superior interest in his
master to mine in my father, was dismissed lightly enough from my mind. I
tried to invent some way of telling this to my father without letting him
perceive that Morphew had been finding faults in him, or I listening; for
it seemed a pity to lose so good a joke. However, as I returned home,
something happened which put the joke entirely out of my head. It is
curious when a new subject of trouble or anxiety has been suggested to
the mind in an unexpected way, how often a second advertisement follows
immediately after the first, and gives to that a potency which in itself
it had not p