As James Marks went out into the street he could have laughed a laugh of bitter mockery. Twelve months' rest for _him_? The doctor had told him one thing--that had he taken rest in time, a very, very much shorter period would have sufficed. "I wonder how many poor men there are like myself in London at this moment," he thought, "who want this rest and cannot take it, and who ought to live better and cannot afford to do it!" It was altogether so very hopeless that he did nothing, except take the tonic, and he continued to go to the City as usual. Some two or three weeks had elapsed since then: he of course growing worse, though there was nothing to show it outwardly: and this was the end of February, and Mrs. Marks sat thinking of it all over the fire; thinking of what she knew, and guessing at what she did not know, and her children were building houses at the table. The servant came in with the tea-things, and took the little girl. Only one servant could be kept--and hardly that. Mrs. Marks had made her own tea and was pouring out the children's milk-and-water, when they heard a cab drive up and stop at the door. A minute after Mr. Marks entered, leaning on the arm of one of his fellow-clerks. "Here, Mrs. Marks, I have brought you an invalid," said the latter gaily, making light of it for her sake. "He seems better now. I don't think there's much the matter with him." Had it come? Had what she had been dreading come--that he was going to have an illness, she wondered. But she was a trump of a wife, and showed herself calm and comforting. "You shall both of you have some tea at once," she said, cheerfully. "Willy, run and get more tea-cups." It appeared that Mr. Marks had been, as the clerk expressed it, very queer that day; more so than usual. He could not do his work at all; had to get assistance continually from one or the other, and ended by falling off his stool to the floor, in what he called, afterwards, a "sensation of giddiness." He seemed fit for nothing, and Mr. Brown said he had better be taken home. That day ended James Marks's work. He had broken down. At night he told his wife what the physician had said; which he had not done before. She could scarcely conceal her dismay. A twelvemonth's rest for him! What would become of them? Failing his salary, they would have no means whatever of living. "Oh, if my father had only acted by us as he ought!" she mentally cried. "James could have taken rest in time then, and all would have been well. Will he help us now it has come to this? Will _she_ let him?--for it is she who holds him in subjection and steels his heart against us."