'Sell it! Oh, dad, you mustn't!'
'I must,' he said; 'I want to give your mother all the comfort and ease I can, and we are poor people. Besides, I shall have no heart for anything now.'
'Why?' questioned True.
'Don't ask so many questions,' Mr. Allonby said sharply, and he was so seldom vexed with them that the children looked at each other with dismayed faces.
Later that morning Mr. Allonby was wandering moodily up and down his strip of garden smoking his pipe; his head was bent, his hands loosely clasped behind him. Suddenly he felt a soft little hand take hold of one of his.
'Father, dear, do tell me about your sad finks. I know they're sad from your face.'
It was Bobby. His father looked down upon him for a minute, then without a word led him into a field which ran up at the back of their garden. He paced the whole length of the field with his little son before he spoke again, and then, leaning against a five-barred gate, he said heavily:
'I can't hold up against it, sonny! I was a worthless creature till she took me in hand, and now, when she is making something of me, when we are going to peg away together at the book which is going to make our fortune, she is going to leave me. I can't live without her! I shall go to the dogs!'
'Is it mother you mean? Oh, father, we won't let her leave us! Why does she want to go?'
'She doesn't; it is cruel fate. Bobby, my boy, life is an utter failure. Oh! I don't know what I am saying, or why I am talking like this. Your mother is dying fast, can't you see it? I hoped she was getting stronger, but the doctor says it has only been her strong will that has got her downstairs at all. Oh, Helen, you're too young, too full of life and spirit to be taken! I will not believe it!'