Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "I can't do that," she said, with an unexpected note of firmness in her voice. "Where could I go and pay less rent than I do here? Only thirty-five pounds a year." "But you see, dear, there are other expenses, servants and light and coal." Joan spoke patiently. "And then the rates and taxes; a tiny flat in London would cost so much less to run." "How can you suggest London to me now, after all I went through there with my James's illness?" Her lips began to tremble. "I should never be able to face the noise and the dirt and the fearful climate, with my heart as it is. You're cruel, Joan." "But, Mother, we have to face things as they are." "I can't," said Mrs. Ogden faintly. "I'm too ill." Joan sighed. "You must, darling; you can't stay here, you haven't got the money, we none of us have now. It'll be all right, truly it will, if you'll let me help to straighten things out." A sly, stubborn expression came over Mrs. Ogden's face; she wiped the tears from her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief. "Tell me exactly what I have got," she asked quietly. Joan told her. "And then there's the fifty pounds a year, dearest, that your poor father saved from the wreck; surely with that as well we can get on here quite comfortably." Joan dropped the letter, something seemed to turn very cold inside her. Even that, then! She meant to take even that from them. "But, Mother, there's Milly's future and--and mine," she finished lamely. Mrs. Ogden flushed. "I don't understand you," she said. "Oh, Mother, don't make it all so terribly difficult, you know what I mean; you know quite well that Milly and I want to work for our living. We shall need the little he's left us if we're ever to make good; it's bad enough, God knows, but we might manage somehow. Oh, Mother, dear! won't you be reasonable?" Mrs. Ogden's mouth tightened. "I see," she said; "you and Milly wish to leave home, to leave me now that I have no one else to care for me. You want to hide me away in a tenement house, while you two lead the life that seems amusing to you. This home is to be broken up and I am to go to London--my health doesn't matter. Well, I suppose I'd be better dead and then you'd be rid of the trouble of me. Your father must be turning in his grave, I should think, feeling as he did about your ridiculous notions. And what a father he was, devoted to you both; he killed himself working and striving to make money for you, and this is the gratitude he gets." She began to sob convulsively. "Oh, James!" she wailed, "James, James, why did you ever leave me!"