ight; he had caught it). "Then in comes Peter and insults me to
my face and tells me to clear out of the house. By all means; I have done
so, and it will be for good. What, Lucy? There, don't cry, child; they
an't worth a tear between the lot of 'em."

But Lucy cried. She, like Peter, was oddly not herself to-day, and cried
and cried.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BREAKING-POINT

The boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long illness ended in
natural death. There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no
self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs
were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'--people who couldn't
pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies. As
two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the
profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house
world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable.

All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the
Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza
and went out to look for jobs, couldn't find one. Again and again he was
curtly refused employment, by editors and others. Every night he came
home a little more bitter than the day before. Peter too, while he lay
mending of his breakages, received a letter from the place of business he
adorned informing him that it would not trouble him further. He had never
been much use to it; he had been taken on at Leslie's request and given a
trial; but it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly admitted.

"Well," he commented, "I suppose one must do something else, eventually.
But I shall put off reflecting on that till I can move about more
easily."

Hilary said, "We are being hounded out of London as we were hounded out
of Venice. It is unbearable. What remains?"

"Nothing, that I can see at the moment," said Peter, laughing weakly.

"Ireland," said Peggy suddenly. "Let's go there. Dublin's worth a dozen
of this hideous old black dirty place. You could get work on 'The
Nationalist,' Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship's just been
given to my cousin Larry Callaghan. Come along to the poor old country,
and we'll try our luck again."

"Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live in," said Hilary,
but mainly from habit. "Still, I presume one must live somewhere, so ..."

He turned to Peter. "Where shall you and Thomas live?"

Pete