A man like me--and the children?'

'How you talk! Don't you think I'm fond of the children?'

'Come and sit down again and talk a bit.'

'No. Will you have the money, Mr. Bunce, or won't you?'

'I'd very much rather have you without it, Totty, and that's the honest
truth.'

'Yes, but you can't, you see. Now, you'll have a rare tale to tell of
me some day, when you're tired of me, And it's all come of your
changing your lodgings.'

'I know.'

'No, you don't know. Come and sit down, and I'll tell you.'

Totty went back, and fondled Nelly against her side, and explained why
the threatened change of abode had made her act with such
independence--characteristic to the end.

CHAPTER XXXV

THREE LETTERS

_Walter Egremont to Mrs. Ormonde._

'Where I to spend the rest of my natural life in this country--which
assuredly I have no intention of doing--I think I should never settle
down to an hour's indulgence of those tastes which were born in me, and
which, in spite of all neglect, are in fact as strong as ever. I cannot
read the books I wish to read; I cannot even think the thoughts I wish
to think. As I have told you, the volumes I brought out with me lay in
their packing-cases for more than six months after my arrival, and for
all the use I have made of them in this second six months they might be
still there. The shelves in the room which I call my library are
furnished, but I dare not look how much dust they have accumulated.

'I read scarcely anything but newspapers--it is I who write the words.
Newspapers at morning, newspapers at night. Yes, one exception; I have
spent a good deal of time of late over Walt Whitman (you know him, of
course, by name, though I dare say you have never looked into his
works), and I expect that I shall spend a good deal more; I suspect,
indeed, that he will in the end come to mean much to me. But I cannot
write of him yet; I am struggling with him, struggling with myself as
regards him; in a month or so I shall have more to say. It is perfectly
true, then, that till quite recently I have read but newspapers. The
people about me scarcely by any chance read anything else, and the
influence of surroundings has from the first been very strong upon me.
You have complained frequently that I say nothing to you about my
_self_; it is one of the signs of my condition that with difficulty I
think of that self, and to pen words about it has been quite
impossible. I long constantly