“Aweel, aweel,” said Mrs. Buchanan, soothingly; and she added, “we must all set our shoulders to the wheel, and they must give us time.” “But it is just time that cannot be given us,” cried her husband, almost hysterically. “The fifth of next month! and this is the twenty-fourth.” “You will have to speak to Morrison.” “Morrison, Morrison!” cried the minister. “You seem to have no idea but Morrison! and it is just to him that I cannot speak.” His wife gazed at him with surprise, and some impatience. “Claude! you are just as foolish as that woman. Will ranting and raving, and ‘I will not do that,’ and ‘I will not do this,’ pay back the siller? It is not so easy to do always what you wish. In this world we must just do what we can.” “In another world, at least, there will be neither begging nor borrowing,” he cried. “There will maybe be some equivalent,” said Mrs. Buchanan, shaking her head. “I would not lippen to anything. It would have been paid long ago if you had but stuck to the point with Morrison, and we would be free.” “Morrison, Morrison!” he cried again, “nothing but Morrison. I wish he and all his books, and his bonds, and his money, were at the bottom of the sea!” “Claude, Claude! and you a minister!” cried Mrs. Buchanan, horrified. But she saw that the discussion had gone far enough, and that her husband could bear no more. As for the unfortunate man himself, he continued, mechanically, to pace about the room, after she left him, muttering “Morrison, Morrison!” between his teeth. He could not himself have explained the rage he felt at the name of Morrison. He could see in his mind’s eye the sleek figure of the man of business coming towards him, rubbing his hands, stopping his confession, “Not another word, sir, not another word; our late esteemed friend gave me my instructions.” And then he could hear himself pretending to insist, putting forward “the fifty:” “_The_ fifty,” with the lie beneath, as if that were all: and again the lawyer’s refusal to hear. Morrison had done him a good office: he had stopped the lie upon his lips, so that, formally speaking, he had never uttered it; he ought to have been grateful to Morrison: yet he was not, but hated him (for the moment) to the bottom of his heart. Frank Mowbray came to luncheon (which was dinner) with Rodie, as Mrs. Buchanan had foreseen, and when he had got through a large meal, was taken up-stairs to see his mother, who was still lying exhausted in Elsie’s bed, very hysterical, laughing and crying in a manner which was by no means unusual in those days, though we may be thankful it has practically disappeared from our experiences now--unfortunately not without leaving a deeper and more injurious deposit of the hysterical. She hid her face when he came in, with a passion of tears and outcries, and then held out her arms to him, contradictory actions which Frank took with wonderful composure, being not unaccustomed to them.