Alicia alone seemed moderate in her merriment. I hugged it to my heart that she appeared to look a shade sadly upon the scene. But I am probably wrong. I went indoors and sank my chin upon my hands with a turmoil of emotions which I wish to forget. Pendleton is winning them, there is no doubt about that. In all the world there is not a soul who would cling to me, excepting possibly Griselda. Shakespeare never uttered anything truer than that life was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I wish I had never been born. This morning I longed to romp and riot with the children, to shake off every atom of care, to laugh and roll on the floor with them, to be happy as I have been happy, but I could not. Held in the grip of a heartache that permeated every fiber in my body, I slunk sullenly away to my study after dinner to be alone. But even that I could not have. Pendleton followed on my heels, lit a cigar and inquired whether he could have a talk with me. Naturally I could not prevent it. I can prevent nothing, for I am no longer master in my own house. "Old man," he began in his suave thick voice, which he means to be friendly, which to me seems orgulous with triumph. "Seems to me you’re about due for a rest." "What d’you mean?" I faltered, wincing, though inwardly I knew well enough what he meant. "Just what I say," he smiled. "You have worked hard enough—supporting my family. Time I took the load off your shoulders—that’s what I mean." I waved my hand in a gesture of deprecation, but I could not speak. "Oh, I know," he insisted doggedly, though even now he cannot look me in the eyes, "you didn’t do it specially for me. You did it because you are a man—you—bah! they don’t make ’em like you, as I’ve told you. But you don’t want praise from me, I know that. You don’t need it. What’s more to the point is, it’s time I took a flat or small house in one of the suburbs and had the lot of them move over and live on me for a while. About time," he nodded his head and shifted his cigar, "about time!" Every word was a stab, but I steeled myself for the ordeal. Wasn’t that what I had been expecting all this time? "When—do you want to make the change?" I endeavored to speak crisply, as when I address the National City or the Guaranty Trust over the telephone at Visconti’s. "Well, I thought I’d begin to look round to-morrow. There’ll be the place to find, some furniture to get—the installment plan will help—whole job ought to be fixed up in two or three weeks, I guess," he added with a laugh. "Uncle Ranny will have to come to supper pretty often to keep the kids as happy as we’d like to see them, eh?" "But a going household—" I spoke quickly in a sort of last spasm of pitiful expostulation—"it’s quite a—an undertaking to set going?"