Willie was never good at dunning friends for money owed, and as we had many brood mares, not our own, left with us for months at a time, the stable expenses, both for forage and wages, became appallingly large. It was always difficult to get the accounts in, and while Willie {26} did not like to worry the owners even for the amount for the bare keep of the animals, he was himself perpetually worried by forage contractors, the shoeing smith, and the weekly wage bill, besides the innumerable extra expenses pertaining to a large stable. As I urged against the sale of the mares, which he so often threatened, their happy, peaceful maternity, in the long lush grass and shade of trees by day, their comfortable boxes at night, and their fondness of me, he used to stare gloomily at me and swear gently as he wished there were more profit than peace in their maternity and my sentimentality. But he could forget his worries in the pleasure of schooling the yearlings, and we agreed always to hold on as long as possible to a life we both found so interesting, and with the facile hope of youth we thought to get the better of our expenses in time. In this year (1869) my eldest (surviving) brother, Frank, became very ill, and Willie and I went to Rivenhall to see him. He wanted me to nurse him, so I stayed on in my old home while Willie returned to Bennington. Frank had consumption, and very badly; he suffered intensely, and I think I have never longed for the presence of a doctor with more anxiety than I did for Dr. Gimson's at that time. My perpetual fear was that the effect of the opiate he gave to deaden poor Frank's pain would wear off before he came again. When it grew dusk Frank desired me to put candles in every window, that he might not see the shadows--the terrifying shadows which delirium and continual doses of morphia never fail to produce. Frank's very dear friend, Captain Hawley Smart, the novelist, came to Rivenhall in the hope that he could cheer poor Frank's last hours; but he was too ill to know or care, {27} and Hawley Smart could, like the rest of us, only await the pitying release of death. We went on at Bennington in very much the same way until the end of that year. Willie had been betting very heavily in the hope of relieving the ever-increasing difficulty of meeting our heavy expenses, and now, in view of his losses in racing added to the cost attendant on keeping up such a large stud, the kind-hearted bank manager insisted that the large overdraft on his bank must be cleared. Hitherto, whenever he had become very pressing, Willie had sent him "something on account," and we had given a breakfast for his hunt, as Willie said such a good fellow "could not eat and ask at the same time." Now, however, Mr. Cheshire sorrowfully declined to eat, and maintained that his duty to his firm necessitated his insisting upon the clearing of the overdraft.