astonished by the news. Then after all his father had been
afraid! ... After all perhaps he had yielded too soon! If he had held
out... If he had not been a baby! ... But it was too late. The
incident was now closed.

Mrs Hamps was kind, but unusually firm in her tone; which reached a
sort of benevolent severity.

"Your father had such high hopes of you. Has--I should say. He
couldn't imagine what on earth possessed you to write such a letter.
And I'm sure I can't. I hope you're sorry. If you'd seen your father
last night you would be, I'm sure."

"But look here, auntie," Edwin defended himself, sneezing and wiping his
nose; and he spoke of his desire. Surely he was entitled to ask, to
suggest! A son could not be expected to be exactly like his father.
And so on.

No! no! She brushed all that aside. She scarcely listened to it.

"But think of the business! And just think of your father's feelings!"

Edwin spoke no more. He saw that she was absolutely incapable of
putting herself in his place. He could not have explained her attitude
by saying that she had the vast unconscious cruelty which always goes
with a perfect lack of imagination; but this was the explanation. He
left her, saddened by the obvious conclusion that his auntie, whom he
had always supported against his sisters, was part author of his
undoing. She had undoubtedly much strengthened his father against him.
He had a gleam of suspicion that his sisters had been right, and he
wrong, about Mrs Hamps. Wonderful, the cruel ruthless insight of
girls--into some things!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

NINE.

Not till Saturday did the atmosphere of the Clayhanger household resume
the normal. But earlier than that Edwin had already lost his
resentment. It disappeared with his cold. He could not continue to
bear ill-will. He accepted his destiny of immense disappointment. He
shouldered it. You may call him weak or you may call him strong.
Maggie said nothing to him of the great affair. What could she have
said? And the affair was so great that even Clara did not dare to
exercise upon it her peculiar faculties of ridicule. It abashed her by
its magnitude.

On Saturday Darius said to his son, good-humouredly--

"Canst be trusted to pay wages?"

Edwin smiled.

At one o'clock he went across the yard to the printing office with a
little bag of money. The younger apprentice was near