This improvement being completed, he made a change in his clothes, and at their tea-time appeared among them all in his black cloth, long-skirted coat, his "pepper and salt" trousers. As another outward sign of his moral degradation he had dispensed with linen at throat and wrists lately, but now his heavy chin sank once more into the enclosure of a collar whose stiffly starched points reached to the middle of his cheeks. The pin which adorned his thickly padded necktie was large in size, consisting of a gold-rimmed glass case in which was exhibited, braided and intertwined, hair cut from the heads of his four children. They had all of them clubbed together to prepare this offering for papa on last St. Valentine's Day. And with the resumption of a more careful toilette the poor man had gone back to the decent demeanour of happier days. He said nothing; was, indeed, in a state of black depression which he made no attempt to hide, but he outraged no longer the sensitive feelings of his family by his behaviour. "Papa is just like what he used to look," Franky said, when he beheld the renovation of his parent's appearance. "Shall we paint pictures this evening, papa?" They tried to hush the child, but Franky saw no reason why he should not make his request, nor why it should be refused. He fetched his paint-box and a store of pictures he had cut from some old papers. "You do sunsets so much more beautifully than me, papa. If you'd just do the sunsets for me!" And presently the father had drawn a chair by the side of his little son's, and was showing him how to mix his colours, and admonishing him not to suck his paintbrushes, as on the happy winter evenings before the crash. It was a landscape with mill and marshland and water, the child had chosen, and there was a large space to be occupied with the sunset at which his parent excelled, and much scraping and mixing of carmine and yellow ochre and cobalt blues. So that Franky's bed-time was here before the picture was finished. He was sent off as usual, protesting and in tears. "You'll help me to finish it to-morrow night, papa? Promise you'll help me to-morrow night!" he entreated, through his weeping. But Bessie, whose task it was to see him to bed, pulled the child relentlessly from the room, and slammed the door upon them both. George Boult had come in, for a last talk with his friend. His presence was never desired by the family, but it relieved the tension, somewhat, of that sad evening. The two men sat with their pipes, and a bottle of that much diminished store of "eighteen forty-sevens" was broached. But presently it was noticed that although William Day held his pipe in his hand he did not smoke. With the other hand he shaded his eyes from the gas light, and he said nothing. One by one the young people crept off to bed, and presently Mrs. Day, whose attempt to keep up a conversation with the visitor had quickly failed, also stood up to go.