"I suppose he knows I am in the house. Yes. Sometimes he speaks to me quite ten words a day. Tell me about leaving the shop, mama." "Mr. Boult has proved to me that we are not solvent." "What does that mean? Not that we are bankrupt? Oh, mama! As if we had not had disgrace enough without that!" "There is no end to it," Mrs. Day said hopelessly. "But you, at least, are out of it, Deleah." She had a dreary air of detachment about her; the troubles that had beset them had been common to them all, but Mrs. Day sat, on this holiday afternoon, as if she were singled out and set apart, a queen of sorrows. Deleah resented that attitude. "Surely you don't think I want to be out of it, mama! Do you think I want to live in luxury while you and Bessie haven't a home?" And at that moment Bessie appeared, coming in from the kitchen and confidential confabulation with Emily. Her face was flushed, and her eyes glittered with an excitement too evidently not pleasurable. "Well! What do you think of it?" she burst forth. "It is bad news. But everything that happens to us is bad," said Deleah, with uncharacteristic despondency. "Bad?" echoed Bessie. "That depends on how you look at it." "Bankruptcy? To owe more than we can pay? I should have thought that there was only one way of looking at it." Bessie swung round to her mother. "You haven't told Deda!" she cried accusingly. "She hasn't told you! Mama is going to marry Mr. Boult, Deleah." "To _marry_ him!" Deleah cried, as if she might have cried "to _murder_ him!" and sprang from her chair to stand before her mother. "Mama! Mama!" Mrs. Day, sitting huddled in her chair as if she lacked the spirit to hold herself upright, and looking all at once a dozen years older, shook a desponding head. "I can't!" she said. "I don't think I _can_ do it." "Well, you've got the chance," Bessie said, hardly. "And it's a good one. Good for all of us. He's rich. He has sat here bragging of his money to me--and that he might spend a couple of thousand a year if he liked. As if I cared! But if it's going to be yours, mama--two thousand a year--I do care. I do!" "But we can't think only of ourselves, Bessie," Deleah, horrified, put in. "We've got to think of mama. She could never endure it." "She should have thought of that before," Bessie said. "Mama should not have been so sly and underhand--" "Bessie! Bessie! You can't mean what you say." "I mean every word of it. Pretending to dislike him! Pretending to keep out of his way!" "Deleah, I have told your sister I nearly died of astonishment when he spoke to me. The idea had never entered my head." Poor Mrs. Day leant the head upon her hand and hid her face, in her misery. "Bessie, you are not to bully mama. Do be silent. Don't mind her, mama. What did you say to him?" "I didn't say one way or the other."