“Let me have my bills, let me have my bills; let me know how I stand,” he cried continually to Dr. Roland, who had the hardest ado to quiet him, to persuade him that for everything there is a reason. “I know these women ought to be paid at once,” he would say. “I know a man like Vereker ought to have his fee every time he comes. You intend it very kindly, Roland, I know; but you are keeping me back, instead of helping me to recover.” What was poor Dr. Roland to say? He was afraid to tell this proud man that everything was paid. That Vereker had taken but half fees, declaring that from a professional man of such distinction as Mr. Mannering, he ought, had the illness not been so long and troublesome, to have taken nothing at all,--was a possible thing to say; but not that Miss Bethune’s purse had supplied these half fees. Even that they should merely be half was a kind of grievance to the patient. “I hope you told him that as soon as I was well enough I should see to it,” he cried. “I have no claim to be let off so. Distinction! the distinction of a half man who never accomplished anything!” “Come, Mannering, come, that will not do. You are the first and only man in England in your own way.” “In my own way? And what a miserable petty way, a way that leads to nothing and nowhere!” he cried. This mood did not contribute to recovery. After his laborious dressing, which occupied all the morning, he would sit in his chair doing nothing, saying nothing, turning with a sort of sickness of despair from books, not looking even at the paper, without a smile even for Dora. The only thing he would sometimes do was to note down figures with a pencil on a sheet of paper and add them up, and make attempts to balance them with the sum which quarter day brought him. Poor Mr. Mannering was refused all information about the sums he was owing; he put them down conjecturally, now adding something, now subtracting something. As a matter of fact his highest estimation was below the truth. And then, by some unhappy chance, the bills that were lying in the sitting-room were brought to him. Alas! the foolishest bills--bills which Dora’s father, knowing that she was unprovided for, should never have incurred--bills for old books, for fine editions, for delicate scientific instruments. A man with only his income from the Museum, and his child to provide for, should never have thought of such things. “Father,” said Dora, thinking of nothing but to rouse him, “there is a large parcel which has never been opened, which came from Fiddler’s after you were taken ill. I had not any heart to open it to see what was in it; but perhaps it would amuse you to look at what is in it now.” “Fiddler’s?” he said, with a sick look of dismay. “Another--another! What do I want with books, when I have not a penny to pay my expenses, nor a place to hide my head?”