“What is the matter, mother?” Elsie said, drawing close to her mother’s side. The minister had come to dinner, looking ill and pale. He had scarcely spoken all through the meal. He had said to his wife that he was not to be disturbed that evening, for there was a great deal to settle and to think of. Mrs. Buchanan, too, bore an anxious countenance. She went up to the drawing-room without a word, with her basket of things to mend in her arms. She had always things to mend, and her patches were a pleasure to behold. She lighted the two candles on the mantelpiece, but said with a sigh that it was a great extravagance, and that she had no right to do it: only the night was dark, and her eyes were beginning to fail. Now the night was no darker than usual, and Mrs. Buchanan had made a brag only the other evening, that with her new glasses she could see to do the finest work, as well as when she was a girl. “What is the matter, mother?” Elsie said. She came very close to her mother, putting a timid arm round her waist. They were, as belonged to their country, shy of caresses, and Elsie was half afraid of being thrown off with an injunction not to be silly; but this evening Mrs. Buchanan seemed to be pleased with the warm clasp of the young arm. “Nothing that was not yesterday, and for years before that. You and me, Elsie, will have to put our shoulders to the wheel.” “What is it, mother?” The idea of putting her shoulder to the wheel was comforting and invigorating, far better than the vague something wrong that clouded the parents’ faces. Mrs. Buchanan permitted herself to give her child a kiss, and then she drew her chair to the table and put on her spectacles for her evening’s work. “Women are such fools,” she said. “I am not sure that your father’s saying that he was not to be disturbed to-night, you heard him?--which means that I am not to go up to him as I always do--has cast me down more than the real trouble. For why should he shut himself up from me? He might know by this time that it is not brooding by himself that will pay off that three hundred pounds.” “Three hundred pounds!”