"Indeed, madam, it is so. They seem to feel every thing so much more. Poor Myra--I can sleep like a top in our bed, and she very often can not close her eyes--and the close room, and the poor food. I can get along--I was made to rough it, my poor aunt always said--but Myra!" "Well but," rejoined Catherine, "do pray tell us how you came to this cruel pass? Your poor father--" "His illness was very lingering and very painful--and several times a surgical operation was required. My mother could not bear--could any of us?--to have it done by the poor blundering operator of that remote village. To have a surgeon from Nottingham was very expensive; and then the medicines; and the necessary food and attendance. The kindest and most provident father can not save much out of one hundred and ten pounds a year, and what was saved was soon all gone." "Well, well," repeated Catherine, her eyes fixed with intense interest upon the speaker. "His deathbed was a painful scene," Lettice went on, her face displaying her emotion, while she with great effort restrained her tears: "he trusted in God; but there was a fearful prospect before us, and he could not help trembling for his children. Dear, dear father! he reproached himself for his want of faith, and would try to strengthen us, 'but the flesh,' he said, 'was weak.' He could not look forward without anguish. It was a fearful struggle to be composed and confiding--he could not help being anxious. It was for us, you know, not for himself." "Frightful!" cried Catherine, indignantly; "frightful! that a man of education, a scholar, a gentleman, a man of so much activity in doing good, and so much power in preaching it, should be brought to this. One hundred and ten pounds a year, was that all? How could you exist?" "We had the house and the garden besides, you know, and my mother was such an excellent manager; and my father! No religious of the severest order was ever more self-denying, and there was only me. My aunt Price, you know, took Myra--Myra had been delicate from a child, and was so beautiful, and she was never made to rough it, my mother and my aunt said. Now I seemed made expressly for the purpose," she added, smiling with perfect simplicity. "And his illness, so long! and so expensive!" exclaimed Catherine, with a sort of cry.