by human beings with their own histories of love and hate. "You mustn't neglect your office work, Johnnie," was what she had said. "We shall want every halfpenny now that Papa is gone. James does his best, but the patients were more used to Papa." After these two rebuffs John had not felt inclined to break his good news to James, who would be sure to sneer, or to George, who would only laugh; so he had wandered upstairs to the old schoolroom, where he had found Edith sitting by a dull fire and dissuading little Hugh from throwing coals at the cat. As soon as he had told Edith what had happened she had made a hero of him, and ever afterwards treated him with admiration as well as affection. Had she not prophesied even that he would be another Dickens? That was something like sisterly love, and he had volunteered to read her the original rough copy, which, notwithstanding Hugh's whining interruptions, she had enjoyed as much as he had enjoyed it himself. Certainly Edith must come to Ambles; twenty years were not enough to obliterate the memory of that warm-hearted girl of fifteen and of her welcome praise. But Hugh? What malign spirit had brought Hugh to his mind at a moment when he was already just faintly disturbed by the prospect of his relations' increasing demands upon his attention? Hugh was only twenty-seven now and much too conspicuously for his own good the youngest of the family; like all children that arrive unexpectedly after a long interval, he had seemed the pledge of his parents' renewed youth on the very threshold of old age, and had been spoiled, even by his cross-grained old father, in consequence: as for his mother, though it was out of her power to spoil him extravagantly with money, she gave him all that she did not spend on caps for herself. John determined to make inquiries about Hugh to-morrow. Not another penny should he have from him, not another farthing. If he could not live on what he earned in the office of Stephen Crutchley, who had accepted the young spendthrift out of regard for their lifelong friendship, if he could not become a decent, well-behaved architect, why, he could starve. Not another penny ... and the rest of his relations agreed with John on this point, for if to him Hugh was a skeleton in the family cupboard, to them he was a skeleton at the family feast. John expelled from his mind all misgivings about Hugh, hoped it would be a fine day to-morrow so that he could really look round the garden and see what plants wanted ordering, tried to remember the name of an ornamental shrub recommended by Miss Hamilton, turned over on his side, and went to sleep. CHAPTER IV