Only think what comforts of all sorts that thirty pounds would have brought to you!" "God will provide," said Johanna, earnestly.

"But I know, my dear, this is sharper to you than to me.

Besides, I have been more used to it." She closed her eyes, with a half shudder, as if living over again the old days--when Henry Leaf's wife and eldest daughter used to have to give dinner parties upon food that stuck in their throats, as if every morsel had been stolen; which in truth it was, and yet they were helpless, innocent thieves; when they and the children had to wear clothes that seemed to poison them like the shirt of Dejanira; when they durst not walk along special streets, nor pass particular shops, for the feeling that the shop people must be staring, and pointing, and jibing at them, "Pay me what thou owest!" "But things can not again be so bad as those days, Hilary.

Ascott is young; he may mend.

People can mend, my child; and he had such a different bringing up from what his father had, and his grandfather, too.