"I was keeping that egg for your breakfast, Angus; I do grudge it a little bit."
"And to eat it when little Alice wanted it so sorely would choke me, wife," replied the husband; and then buttoning his thin overcoat tightly about him, he went out into the night.
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY.
The children were at last in bed, the drawing-room lodger had finished her dinner, the welcome time of lull in the day's occupations had come, and Mrs. Home sat by the dining-room fire. A large basket, filled with little garments ready for mending, lay on the floor at her feet, and her working materials were close by; but, for a wonder, the busy fingers were idle. In vain Daisy's frock pleaded for that great rent made yesterday, and Harold's socks showed themselves most disreputably out at heels. Charlotte Home neither put on her thimble nor threaded her needle; she sat gazing into the fire, lost in reverie. It was not a very happy or peaceful reverie, to judge from the many changes on her expressive face. The words, "Shall I, or shall I not?" came often to her lips. Many things seemed to tear her judgment in divers ways; most of all the look in her little son's eyes when he asked that eager, impatient question, "mother, why aren't we rich?" but other and older voices than little Harold's said to her, and they spoke pleadingly enough, "Leave this thing alone; God knows what is best for you. As you have gone on all these years, so continue, not troubling about what you cannot understand, but trusting to him."
"I cannot; I am so tired sometimes," sighed the poor young wife.
She was still undetermined when her husband returned. There was a great contrast in their faces—a greater almost in their voices, in the tone of her dispirited, "Well, Angus," and his almost triumphant answer,——
"Well, Lottie, that hard fight has ended bravely. Thank God!"
"Ah! then the poor soul has gone," said the wife, moving her husband's chair into the warmest corner.