"You are but a child," he said. "If they desire it, your duty may be for the present to yield. But if it is not needful, they ought to let you go. Some day I will call and perhaps speak about it." And he did so, very kindly, but it wasn't of much use. Mother was angry, and after he was gone she said she would not be meddled with, and I was to do as she and father liked. CHAPTER XIII. A DAMP DWELLING. ONE gets used, more or less, to almost any sort of state; and by the time we had been seven or eight months in the house, I remember how things looked quite natural, and the old life in the cottage seemed almost like a dream to me. I don't know whether it did to the others. I am not saying that I liked the new life, or would have chosen it: but there it was, and one had to go through with it. We had a great deal of pleasuring that summer. Everybody was very friendly; and I must say this for father, that having more money did not make him want to throw off old acquaintances, as some in his place might have done. It turned his head enough, but not in that way. Father did not take to work again, and it is quite certain he was none the happier for being idle. It wasn't as if he had anything else to take the place of what he was used to do. I never saw any man change as he changed, month by month. The old brisk ways and pleasant look quite disappeared, and in their stead came a slouching sort of manner, and a lazy discontented expression. He was always grumbling and never satisfied; and he went to bed early, and got up late, and did not seem to know what to do with himself when he was up: and as for eating and drinking, they were getting to be the chief business of his life. I hope it isn't unkind to write all this, for how could I help seeing it? Mother fretted sometimes about the change in him, though she dearly liked being able to wear smart caps and dresses, and to show off before the neighbours how much money we had. She and Mrs. Raikes got into a sort of race, as it were, to see which should be the smartest. Each wanted to have the best parlour and the gayest clothes. Father laughed sometimes in a gruff sort of way, and said it was "folly," but he did not check it. So for many months things went pretty smoothly. I had a sort of feeling, girl as I was, that all was not right: and yet I could not have told why, or have said where the wrong lay. Money seemed plentiful; or, if at times father ran short, he told us just to order things at the shops, and "next week" he would "make all square." I used to see mother getting all sorts of things for herself and Asaph and the house, but she seldom took me with her to the shops, and I could not tell what was paid for and what was not.