"I've refused all these to Uncle Timothy; he's been worrying me with questions--" I said desperately. "Three florists, two confectioners," he enumerated, as if he had not heard me. "--Women eat sweets by the ton, but lately there have been few of 'em in this house. Then here are the accounts for newspaper clippings, you know; Shanks and Romeike; but they're trifles." "You must have been a good customer," John said, glancing about the dishevelled flat--I hadn't had the heart to rearrange it since Mrs. Whitney left. "From the look of the place, I believe you would have bought a mummy or a heathen god, if anybody had suggested it to you." "I have a little heathen god--Gautama; alabaster--and a mummied cat." "And you're very fond of that? But no matter. Shoemaker and milliner and furniture man; that makes eleven." He lengthened his list on the margin of a newspaper. "Well, I never paid Van Nostrand for that painting, and I've even forgotten how much he said it would be. And there's a photograph bill--a perfectly scandalous one--and another dressmaker; Mrs. Edgar; I went back to her after Meg's woman got crusty, but she never'll sue me. And the Japanese furniture shop and--another photographer--and here's the bill for bric-a-brac--that's sixteen. The wine account--there is one, but it ought to be Mrs. Whitney's; for entertaining. I suppose Pa and Ma would say that was a very wicked bill, now wouldn't they, Schoolmaster?" "They would indeed, Helen 'Lizy; I'm not sure that I don't agree with them. By the way, does your father know about all this?" "Yes, a little. I've begged him for money, but he won't mortgage the farm. And Judge Baker knows. He wants me to come back to his house, but of course I won't do it. I guess he's sent for Father; Pa's coming East soon, on a cattle train pass." "A cattle train!" John stabbed the paper viciously, then he said more gently:-- "A cattle train is cold comfort for a substantial farmer at his time of life; and I don't think we will let him mortgage." That young man will need discipline; but I imagine he was thinking less about my poor old father than about--well, I needn't have mentioned the Baker house, but what does he really know of how I came to leave it? Perhaps suspicion and bitter memories made my retort more spirited than it need have been. "We won't discuss that, please," I said with hauteur; "and we won't be too emphatic about what is past. It _is_ past. I'll find out what is a proper scale of expenditure for a young lawyer's wife in New York, and I shall not exceed it. I've been living very economically for the sphere that seemed open to me. Perhaps I ought not to have tried it; but I think you should blame those who lured me into extravagance and then deserted me. I've had a terrible, terrible experience! Do you know that? And I was within an ace of becoming an ornament of the British peerage. Did you know that?"