itten in his extremity to a
bachelor brother, known in the little house at Camden Town as the Mammon
of Unrighteousness. The brother had a big house down in Kent; and into
that house, though it was the house of Mammon, Arthur proposed that he
should be received for a week or two. He took care to mention, casually,
and by way of a jest after the brother's own heart, that for those weeks
he, Arthur, would be a lonely widower.

The brother was in the habit of remembering Arthur's existence once a year
at Christmas. He would have had him down often enough, he said, if the
poor beggar could have come alone. But he barred Aggie and the children.
Aggie, poor dear, was a bore; and the children, six, by Jove (or was it
seven?), were just seven (or was it six?) blanked nuisances. Though
uncertain about the number of the children, he always sent seven or eight
presents at Christmas to be on the safe side. So when Arthur announced
that he was a widower, the brother, in his bachelor home, gave a great
roar of genial laughter. He saw an opportunity of paying off all his debts
to Arthur in a comparatively easy fashion all at once.

"Take him for a fortnight, poor devil? I'd take him for ten fortnights.
Heavens, what a relief it must be to get away from 'Aggie'!"

And when Arthur got his brother's letter, he and Aggie were quite sorry
that they had ever called him the Mammon of Unrighteousness.

But the brother kept good company down in Kent. Aggie knew that, in the
old abominable Queningford phrase, he was "in with the county." She saw
her Arthur mixing in gay garden scenes, with a cruel spring sun shining on
the shabby suit that had seen so many springs. Arthur's heart failed him
at the last moment, but Aggie did not fail. Go he must, she said. If the
brother was the Mammon of Unrighteousness, all the more, she argued,
should he be propitiated--for the children's sake. (The Mammon was too
selfish ever to marry, and there were no other nieces and nephews.) She
represented the going down into Kent as a sublime act of self-sacrifice by
which Arthur, as it were, consecrated his paternity. She sustained that
lofty note till Arthur himself was struck with his own sublimity. And when
she told him to stand up and let her look at him, he stood up, tired as he
was, and let her look at him.

Many sheepfolds have delivered up their blameless flocks to Mammon. But
Aggie, when she considered the quality of the god, felt dimly that no more
inno