As for all the bills they were put into a drawer and just left alone there, as if they might be expected to pay themselves. But this of course could not go on. By-and-by they began to come in a second time, and father was spoken to by one tradesman and another in a way that he did not find pleasant. So, though he had begun of late to dislike any sort of work, and to find everything a trouble, except smoking and lounging about, he did at last actually look through the whole pile, and find out what they all came to, added up together. Neither he nor mother had had before then any notion of how the prices of small things mount up. Mother was always saying, "Oh, it's only a shilling;" or, "It's only a half-crown;" or, "What's five shillings out of four hundred pounds?" And father and she had had no sort of steady plan in their spending, but had just got anything here and there as they felt inclined. But four hundred a year will not buy everything,—no, nor four thousand either. And it seems to me that the question of being poor or rich don't so much hang on what a man has, as on what a man wants. He that has one hundred a year of money, and has wants that can be satisfied on ninety a year, is rich; and he that has five thousand a year, with wants that can only be satisfied on six thousand, is poor. I think we were poorer in our new home than we had been in the little cottage. A good many bills had been allowed, the last Midsummer, to stand over till Michaelmas; and a good many more had been allowed to stand over till Christmas. It was no wonder that the tradespeople were getting impatient at last. But I did not know how bad things were, till that day when I came into the parlour, and found mother crying. I had been helping to cook, and my hands were all floury. Mother often cried at little things, but this was something worse than common. I knew it in a moment from her face. "What's wrong, mother?" I asked, and I shook the flour from my hands and came close to her. "Matter enough," said she. "But it don't signify. You won't understand." "Maybe I should," I said. "I am not a child now, you know." "Aren't you?" she said, and she looked at me. "No, you are getting tall, to be sure. You're taller than me." And then she burst out crying afresh. "O Phœbe!" said she,—"father's been so awfully angry." "What about, mother?" I asked. "Why, about everything," said she, sobbing. "About everything, Phœbe. He says I'm ruining him, and it's all my fault if we can't pay our way, and he says I'm just worth nothing at all. I wonder whatever poor father would have said to hear him,—poor father as used to dote on me so. And I'm sure, if I have spent money, wasn't it Miles himself that told me to get whatever I liked? And now to have him turn on me like this." "But what made father angry to-day?" I asked.