Business Bothers For a few days 'Duke Radford appeared to get better with astonishing rapidity.

He left his bed, and crept across the store, to sit in the rocking-chair by the kitchen stove, and said he was now quite well.

But when he had pulled up thus far towards strength again, he stopped short, unable to get any farther.

In vain Mrs.Burton plied him with every nourishing food she could think of: an invalid he remained, weak and depressed, all his old energy and enterprise under a cloud, and with a settled melancholy which nothing could lift.
It was then that the burden of life descended with such crushing force on Katherine.

The work of the store must go on, and it was harder in winter than in summer.