Mrs. Perry had come home one afternoon from a round of her district, full of the troubles of the Hobsons. Mr. Hobson had broken out again, and had risked a small fortune, not this time in mining, but in a patent for increasing the amount of petrol to be used in motor-cars. His excuse was that he had some mechanical knowledge, and had spotted an error in the invention which he thought would make it useless. But, unfortunately, he had mentioned his discovery to others, the errors had been pointed out to the patentees, and they had succeeded in putting them right. Or, as was darkly hinted, there had been no error at all, and Mr. Hobson had fallen into a trap. But, in any case, he had had to realise at a high figure, and had come out of the deal more overloaded with wealth than ever. We had all sympathised deeply over the picture of misery that Mrs. Perry had drawn. Mr. Hobson, she said, was overcome with remorse, and like a man distracted. He had sat in his overfurnished dining-room with his head in his hands, while his wife, scintillating with diamonds, though it was early in the afternoon, had tried to comfort him, her face pale but full of courage. It had been almost insupportable to hear the children crying at the table loaded with provisions, and to think that the father, the bread-loser of the family, was powerless to help them. "Cannot we do something for them, Samuel?" Mrs. Perry cried. But her husband shook his head sadly, and said he was afraid not. "Hobson has himself to thank for it," he said, "and I fear he is incorrigible. If we were to take the burden of this mistake on our shoulders he would only make another one. The fact is, he is unfitted for business affairs. You can lose more money in the city than anywhere else, but you have to get up very early in the morning to do it, and the men who are successful at it, and lose large fortunes, are a good deal cleverer than poor Hobson." I had offered then and there to look into the case and see if I could do anything to help. But although everybody said that it was very generous of me, they all tried to dissuade me from risking the small number of debts I already possessed. Edward did more. He rather annoyed me by taking me aside and telling me that my duty was now towards Miriam, and that it would not be right for me to be charitable at her expense, which was what it would come to if I tried to straighten out the Hobsons' badly involved affairs. But I had now made up my mind that nothing should stand in the way of my charitable instincts. I was not in a position to do much. I could not set the unfortunate Hobson on his feet again as a poor man. But I could go and see him, and come away leaving him a good deal poorer than he was before.