Jane replied in a manner which showed great conflict and agony of mind. She should feel like a child, if her father must leave her. She had never lived without him. She did not know that she could conduct herself and her affairs without him. She was in a terror when she thought of it, and her mind was full of reproach—— “Ah! you’ll be marrying, next thing, and all my things will be going nobody knows where. But as for reproaching yourself,—no need of that, so far, for you have been a good daughter to me.” Jane declared that she had no thoughts of marrying. “Come, Doctor, which way are you going? Will you walk with me?” said Peek, whose apprehensions about the final destination of the property were roused by the sentimental regards which Dr. Say began to cast upon Jane, when the conversation took this turn. Dr. Say was in no hurry; could not think of leaving his patient; would stay to see the effect of the wine,—and so forth. The old man stretched his feeble hand towards the doctor’s skirt, and begged him to remain.—One reason of his wish was that he felt as if he should not die whilst his doctor was by his side; and another was that he wished for the presence of a stranger while Henry was with him, and Henry was now coming up stairs. “They say I am going, Harry; and now perhaps you will be sorry that you did not do all that I bade you.” “I always have been sorry, father, that I could not.” “I should like to know, Doctor, how one should manage one’s sons now-a-days. Here’s Harry won’t follow my business for all I can say; and Mike is leaving the shop to take care of itself, while I am laid fast in this way. He was to have been back three days ago; and not a word have we heard of him, and don’t know where to send to him. One must look to one’s daughters, after all—though my father never had to say that of me. I was in the very middle of counting our stock of short moulds when I was called up stairs to see him die.—Well, Henry; I have left you nothing, I give you notice.” “Indeed, father, I am able to earn what I want; and I have to thank you for this. You have given me already more than the wealth of the world; and I shall never forget it.” “I don’t very well know what you mean; but I can fancy about the not forgetting. I saw a moon over the church there——” The old man was evidently wandering after some idea of what he had observed on the night after his father’s death, and many nights since; and with this he mixed up some strange anxieties about the neglect of the shop this day. Within a few minutes, Peek was gone to be a Job’s comforter to his dawdling wife, assuring her that she could not, by any exertion, arrive in Budge Row in time to see her father alive; Jane was trying to pacify the old man by attending behind the counter; while Dr. Say and Henry remained with the patient. Henry did not choose to be alone with him, lest any fit of generosity should seize his father, and cause dissension among the more dutiful of the children.