Mrs. Adrian’s spectacles had been a fearful source of trouble to the whole family. If she lost them, Ruth was started all over the house on a tour of exploration, and Mrs. Adrian was always quite sure that she had put them in sueh and such a place, and somebody must have moved them. As a rule, they were found in close proximity to the owner. She usually hid them in her lap under her work, or shut in the book she had been reading. One night the entire household were kept up till two in the morning. Mrs. Adrian without her spectacles and her temper at the same time vowed she would not go to bed till the glasses were found. Under the circumstances, Ruth and Mr. Adrian felt bound to share her vigil, and they joined the servants in a room-to-room and corner-to-corner visitation. Mrs. Adrian sat in her easy-chair, and resolutely refused to budge till her spectacles were found. She wouldn’t lose them for the world. It was fortunate that she did move at last, for she had been sitting on the spectacles all the time. When they were broken and sent to be repaired, they always came back with glasses that didn’t suit—at least Mrs. Adrian always declared so. At last, one day, after breaking a pair, which had been lost for nearly a week and had eventually turned up in the flour-barrel, where Mrs. Adrian had dropped them while on a tour of inspection through the larder, the good lady vowed and declared that she’d never wear another pair as long as she lived, and she did there and then incontinently fling the damaged pair out of the window in a temper, much to the astonishment of the vicar of the parish, who was passing at the time, and who, bowing politely to the mistress of the house, received the ejected spectacles in the hollow of his hat. Mrs. Adrian kept her word, and without much sacrifice on her part, for her eyesight was still fairly good, and she could do her knitting and her darning without glasses. But she declared she couldn’t read, and so, for her edification, Ruth was requested to read the morning paper aloud—that is, such portions of it as she thought would be interesting to her mother. Under these circumstances the concealment of the failure of the Great Blankshire Bank for a time was not so difficult a task as it would otherwise have been. Mr. Adrian was loth to let the blow fall upon his wife. He knew that eventually she would have to know it, but he could not summon up courage to break it yet. With all her peculiarities, she had been a loyal and a devoted partner to him, and, looking back upon their long years of happiness and comfort, it broke his heart to think that now, in her old age—now, when infirmity had come upon her—the remaining years of her life might have to be passed in discomfort and poverty. He hoped that there might be better news, that the report was exaggerated, and that the affairs of the bank might not be so hopelessly involved.