"It doesn't make any difference about me!" Mrs. Emery heroically assured her, "I don't want you to be influenced by thinking about my feelings, Lydia. Above everything in the world, I don't want you to feel the _slightest_ pressure from me--or any one of the family. Oh, darling, all I want--all any of us want, is what is best for our little Lydia!" CHAPTER XII A SOP TO THE WOLVES Six o'clock had struck when Mrs. Sandworth came wearily back from her Christmas shopping. It was only the middle of November, but each year she began her preparations for that day of rejoicing earlier and earlier, in a vain attempt to avoid some of the embittering desolation of confusion and fatigue which for her, as for all her acquaintances, marked the December festival. She let herself down heavily from the trolley-car which had brought her from the business part of Endbury back to what was known as the "residential section," a name bestowed on it to the exclusion of several other much larger divisions of town devoted exclusively to the small brick buildings blackened by coal smoke in which ordinary people lived. As she walked slowly up the street, her arms were full of bundles, her heart full of an ardent prayer that she might find her brother either out or in a peaceable mood. She loved and admired Dr. Melton more than anyone else in the world, but there were moments when the sum total of her conviction about him was an admission that his was not a reposeful personality. For the last fortnight, this peculiarity had been accentuated till Mrs. Sandworth's loyalty had cracked at every seam in order not to find him intolerable to live with. Moreover, her own kind heart and intense partiality for peace in all things had suffered acutely from the same suspense that had wrought the doctor to his wretched fever of anxiety. It had been a time of torment for everybody--everybody was agreed on that; and Mrs. Sandworth had felt that life in the same house with Lydia's godfather had given her more than her share of misery.