Travice reached the chess-board from a side-table where it was kept, took his seat opposite Peter, and began to set out the men. Of the same kind, considerate nature that his father was before him, he compassionated the lonely man's solitary days, and was wont to play a game at chess with him sometimes in an evening, to while away one of his weary hours. But Peter, on this night, put up his hand in token of refusal. "Not this evening, Travice. I am not equal to it. My spirits are low." "Do you feel ill?" asked Travice, beginning to put the pieces in the box again. "I feel low; out of sorts. Mr. Palmer has been here talking of things, and he gives so deplorable a state of private affairs generally, consequent upon the long-continued commercial depression, that it's hard to say who's safe and whose tottering. He has especial means of ascertaining, you know, so there's no doubt he's right." "Well, what of that?" returned Travice. "It cannot affect you; you are not in business." "True. I was not thinking of myself." "A game at chess will divert your thoughts." "Not to-night, Travice; I'd rather not play to-night." "Will you have a game, Lucy?" She looked up from her sewing to smile a negative. "That would be leaving papa quite to his thoughts. I think we had better talk to him." "Travice," Peter Arkell suddenly said, "I am sure this depression must seriously affect your father." "Of course it does," was the ready answer. "He has just now had to borrow more money again." "Then Palmer was right," thought Peter Arkell. "Will he keep on the business?" he asked aloud. "I should not, were I in his place," said Travice. "He would have given up long ago, I believe, but for thinking what's to become of me. Of course if he does give up, I am thrown on the world, a wandering Arab." His tone was as much one of jest as of gravity. The young do not see things in the same light as the old. To his father and to Peter Arkell, his being thrown out of the business he had embraced as his own, appeared an almost irrecoverable blight in life; to Travice himself it seemed but a very slight misfortune. The world was before him, and he had honour, education, health, and brains; surely he could win his way in it! "It is not well to throw down one calling and take up another," observed Peter, thoughtfully. "It does not always answer." "But if you are forced to it!" argued Travice. "There's no help for it then, and you must do the best you can." "It is a pity but you had gone to Oxford, Travice, and entered into some profession!" "I suppose it is, as things seem to be turning out. Thrown out of the manufactory, I should seem a sort of luckless adventurer, not knowing which way to turn to prey upon the public." "It would be just beginning life again," said Peter, his grave tone bearing in it a sound of reproach to the lighter one.