“I shall have to give up the office,” answered my father. “Without him there's not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered about the matter--offered to divide the work, letting me retain the straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I declined. Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do with him.” “I think you were quite right,” agreed my mother. “What I blame myself for,” said my father, “is that I didn't see through him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me from the beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn't I?” They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to time, as though there were something she could not understand. He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must contrive to live. The little money he had saved must be kept for investments--nothing speculative--judicious “dealings,” by means of which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here the training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well. One man my father knew--quite a dull, commonplace man--starting a few years ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands. Foresight was the necessary qualification. You watched the “tendency” of things. So often had my father said to himself: “This is going to be a big thing. That other, it is no good,” and in every instance his prognostications had been verified. He had “felt it;” some men had that gift. Now was the time to use it for practical purposes. “Here,” said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye upon the surrounding scenery, “would be a pleasant place to end one's days. The house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might enlarge it, the drawing-room might be thrown out--perhaps another wing.” I felt that our good fortune as from this day was at last established. But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon, demanding answer.