could do was to take more than his part in domestic
trifles, such as most men would have scorned, and to relieve his wife
as far as possible of the children, often at the cost of his writing.
He bore the brunt of many a trial of which she was scarcely
aware--slights from the harsh vulgar, and compassion from the kind
vulgar; and the proud self-assertion was gone which had hardened him to
all such stings. To his lot fell the misery of weighing and balancing
what comforts could best be cut off without positive injury to his wife
and little ones. To consider whether an empty house should be repaired
for a doubtful tenant, to make the venture, and have it rejected, was a
severe vexation, when the expense trenched on absolute necessaries, and
hardly less trying was it to be forced to accept the rent of the House
Beautiful, knowing how ill it could be spared; and yet, that without it
he must lapse into the hopeless abyss of debt. Moreover, there was

The terrible heart thrill
To have no power of giving

to some of the poor who had learnt to look to the Terrace in his
grandmother's time, and meals were curtailed, that those in greater
need might not be left quite unaided.

Nor was this the only cause for which James underwent actual stern
privation. The reign of bad cookery was over. Charlotte, if
unmethodical, was delicately neat; and though she kept them waiting for
their dinner, always served it up with the precision of past
prosperity. Cheap cookery and cottage economy were the study, and the
results were pronounced admirable; but the master was the dispenser;
and when a modicum of meat was to make nourishing a mountain of rice,
or an ocean of broth, it would occur to him, as he helped Isabel, that
the piece de resistance would hardly hold out for the kitchen
devourers. He would take the recipe at its word, and dine on the
surrounding structure; and in spite of the cottage economy, he was
nearly as hungry after dinner as before it, and people began to say
that he had never recovered his looks since his illness. These daily
petty acts of self-denial and self-restraint had begun to tame his
spirit and open his eyes in a manner that neither precept nor example
had yet effected.

Charlotte had imbibed to the full the spirit of patient exertion which
pervaded the house. Mrs. Martha had told her she was a foolish girl,
and would be tired of the place in a fortnight; but when she did not
see her tired, sh