"They didn't want you there, did they, Binks?" he said, taking the dog in his arms. "You'd have made a row, wouldn't you? Well, she is gone, old boy--you don't realize it now, but you will later, when you miss the feeds and nice baths she gave you. She used to buy choice morsels for you. I know, for I've seen the bones lying around." The remainder of that day he spent in sheer torment, strolling about in the parks with Binks, and when he returned home he found Betty and Minnie alone in the parlor. Their eyes were red from weeping. "It is on account of the way mother is taking it," Betty explained. "She's gone to bed with a headache. The excitement of the wedding kept her up, but she has gone to pieces since they left. Really, Harold was all she had in the world. Min and I didn't count." John could think of nothing to say, and he went on to his room. There were some blue-prints and calculations awaiting his attention on the big desklike table in his room, and he took them up to look them over, but laid them down again. "What is the use?" he muttered. "My God! what is the use of _anything_? Money? What do I care for money? What could I do with it if I had millions?" That night when he was about to go to bed he looked into Dora's room. She had left it in perfect order, but somehow it seemed as barren as a room for transient guests in a hotel. "Dear, dear Sis," he said, with a lump in his throat. "When you and I used to get up before day in that old ramshackle home--you in your rags, and I in my overalls--we didn't dream that all those things would happen and draw to an end like this. There is nothing for me to look forward to--nothing, absolutely nothing, but you will find peace, contentment, and happiness. Well, that is enough. It was worth it, Sis. I'm out of it, and it is only my yellow streak that is whining." The room, in its tomblike silence and inanimate reminders, oppressed him sorely, and, closing the door that he might not, even by accident, glance into it again that night, he started to undress for bed, when Binks began loudly barking down-stairs. Then he heard Betty trying to quiet him. "What is the matter with him?" John called down from the head of the stairs. "I think he wants you," Betty laughed. "I can't pacify him. He keeps jumping up and down, pawing the floor, and crying like a baby." "Unfasten him, please, and let him come up," John answered.