imple head with them; so I go cruising off in the fog, as
you call it, by myself."

"Oh, if you once get through with that man's affairs, we'll have no more
fogs!"

"No, deary, we'll have summer weather and a smooth sea, I hope, for the
rest of our voyage."

"You see, John, I have been dreadfully anxious, more than I could tell
you. If anything goes wrong, I've always noticed that it isn't the big
people that have to suffer; it's the smaller ones that get caught."

"Yes, it's an old story; the big flies break out of the spider's net;
the little chaps hang there. But I'll settle up the business to-morrow.
I shall have enough to buy us a little house in the country,--a snug
box, with a garden; then I'll get a horse to drive about with, and we'll
take some comfort. Come, little woman, sit on my knee! Come, baby, here
is a knee for you, too!"

Holding them in his arms, he still mused upon the morrow, and once and
again charged his mind to remember "two thousand for Sandford, ten
thousand for Danforth and Dot!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

Alice did not feel the utter loneliness of her situation, until, as she
walked along, square after square, she encountered so many hundreds of
abstracted or curious or impudent faces, and reflected that it was upon
such people that her future support and comfort would depend. She tried
to discover in some countenance the impress of kindly benevolence;--not
that she proposed to risk so much as a question; but it was her first
experience with the busy world, and she wished to observe its ways,
when neither relationship nor personal interest was involved. Small
encouragement she would have felt to approach any that she met. Men of
middle-age walked by as in dreams, cold, unobservant, listless; the
younger ones, fuller of life, strode on with high heads, and flinging
glances that were harder to bear than stony indifference, even. Ladies
clothed in costly furs scanned the pretty face under the mourning bonnet
with prying eyes, or tossed her a hasty, scornful look. Shop-girls
giggled and stared. Boys rushed by, rudely jostling every passenger.
Old women in scanty petticoats that were fringed by no dressmaker, with
pinched faces and watery eyes, looked imploringly and hobbled along,
wrapping parcels of broken victual under their faded shawls.--A sorry
world Alice thought it. In the country, she had been used to receive a
kindly bow or a civil "Good-morning!" from every person she met; and the
is