Five thousand pounds

by Agnes Giberne

As the weeks passed on, father did not seem really better. The broken bones were mending, but he lay still like a log, seeming to have no power in his body and no sense in his mind. At first there was a great deal of fever, and his thoughts wandered much; but when that passed off, sense did not come back. He knew nobody clearly, and was like a little child, having to be fed and cared for every hour.

And at last the doctor told us plainly that it always would be so. He said he had feared it from the beginning. The injuries to the head and spine were so great that father could never recover from them. He might linger on a good many years, but he would be helpless and childish to the end.

I can see now how this great trouble was sent in mercy to mother and me, for we were saved by it from greater miseries. But at the time we could not see things so. When we thought how the accident had happened, and when we remembered what father had once been, it seemed almost more than we could bear.

For a long while there was no time to think of anything but the nursing. Soon, however, it became needful to give attention to something else. Christmas bills had come in again, and tradespeople were growing impatient. And when mother and I began to look into the matter, we found strangely little of the five thousand pounds left. Father had been selling out capital again and again, unknown to us; so instead of £400 a year there was not £200, and there were demands enough to swallow up a good part of what remained. Mr. Simmons had fleeced poor father indeed; though of course it had not all gone in that direction.

Mr. Simmons was nowhere to be found. He had gone away a day or two after the accident, to pay a week's visit to a friend,—so he said. But though a good many weeks had gone by, he had not returned, and he never did return. Nobody knew his whereabouts: so we could ask him no questions about father's affairs.

We let our house as quickly as possible, and we sold out a good part of what remained of the money, so as to pay off everything. Mother said I should manage it all my own way, and I could not bear to keep people waiting longer for their due. I went to kind Mr. Scott, and he helped me with advice. Then we settled to live in a tiny cottage, much smaller than our old one, which had a second room on the ground-floor, beside the kitchen, where father could sleep. There was just enough money left to keep us going, with great care, and with the help of what we could earn,—I by charing, and mother by needlework. Asaph came to live at home, and went to a shop every day as errand boy.

"FATHER NEVER BECAME BETTER."

These changes were at first a great trouble to mother. Yet in time she learnt to be thankful that she had not been left to go on in her old way, caring for nothing but amusing herself. And as for me, I was far happier in the little cottage than I had been in the house.

Not that there was any harm in our having a nice house and more money, if God gave them to us. The harm was in taking it all, without a thought of how to use and spend according to His will.