He looked round the room. Everywhere the dust lay thick, and in the hearth were the torn fragments of letters he had thrown there two weeks ago. He looked at his frayed cuffs, he was aware of his buttonless shirt, and he did not like to think of the children's underlinen. He had no doubt that it was clean, but he knew it would be unmended. Neglect working with poverty is ruthless in destruction, and he sat like a man helpless under a threatened violence of storm. So this room, and the one downstairs littered with newspapers, books, and odds and ends of sewing, with the knob of the sideboard still waiting for glue, were produced by Nancy's best efforts! He did not want that knob restored to a place where it was not necessary a knob should be, but the meaning of its absence was sinister. There was much sweetness in Nancy, but there was little help, and she looked ill. His cares dragged at him, and there was only himself to lift them until the day when Theresa's strong young hands would cast them off. But there was Grace. Vigorously, and with a quick memory of Alexander's wet head appearing above the water of the pool, he remembered her. He blamed himself for his ingratitude to the nimble toes which would earn a little salary for her next year. "I do not think of her enough," he murmured. "Wrong of me. Nancy sees it, Alexander sees it. Yet I love her." Her success, he considered, would mean much to Theresa; college, perhaps--hope gleamed a little--she ought to go to college, and it might be managed. He must have courage. For a moment he dreamed of commercial conquests, of new customers and large commissions, but he had dreamed before, and he had not Janet's gift for dreaming true. He roused himself to facts, and one of the hardest of them was his brother George. In the last resort, there was brother George, who lived in lodgings with a harmonium, and longed for a home. He was a man of some substance, a dealer in grains, willing to pay dearly for what he wanted, and shrinkingly Edward Webb foresaw the day when George would have that home offered to him, not out of pity for his loneliness or desire for his company, but for the money he could give--money which would help Theresa on the road to fame and allow Nancy to feel ill in comfort. She ought to see a doctor. There were hollows in the cheeks he had known so fresh and full, and her touch was nerveless. His heart shook with fear, for he loved her still with the strange disturbance of his youth. He clenched his fists and shook them. To be so powerless, so powerless, though he strove his mightiest! His soul was fretted; life was a jumble; he saw himself struggling along an endless, dusty road, white to the knees, eyes blinded and throat parched. There stretched before him years more of such travelling, yet--and his hands unclenched themselves--was he not greatly blessed? His eyes were sometimes cleansed by a sight of stars above the hills; he stooped now