"A hundred or two dollars! I am glad you feel so rich, sir. When I was at your age, Mr. Antis, a hundred or two dollars were of some consequence to me. But, however, we will drop the subject for the present, as your good wife's dinner must not be kept waiting. Anatomy and physiology, indeed! Now, sir, you had better give your whole attention to your anatomy henceforth, for, take my word for it, you will never make a miller."
Eben went home to his dinner feeling as if a gulf had opened under his feet. Somehow, the idea of being discharged had never entered his head. He expected to be found fault with, and to have his wages lowered, but he had never thought of this. It seemed as though he had not only lost everything, but as though he were disgraced for ever. Who would employ him if it were known that Mr. Antis had turned him off, and for such a reason? What would his mother and Flora say? He felt utterly stunned and miserable, and for the first time since their troubles commenced, he was ready to give up in despair.
"Why, Eben, what is the matter?" exclaimed Mary Clarke as he entered the house. "You are as white as a sheet!"
"I suppose you have got the sick headache by reading all night again," said Flora. "I should think you have tried that often enough already."
It was one of the worst features of Flora's "moods" that she seemed determined to hurt in some way every person within her reach, and make everybody as unhappy as herself. Eben answered her briefly:
"I have not the sick headache, and I did not read a word last night after I went up stairs. I have lost my place at the mill."
"Lost your place!" exclaimed both the girls, and Mary asked, "How did that happen?"
"By my own fault, I suppose," said Eben. "I forgot some letters, and made a great deal of trouble; in short, I did not mind my business, and so I have lost it."
"What a perfect shame!" said Flora, glad, as it seemed, of a legitimate object to expend her ill-humour upon. "Just as though anybody could not make such a mistake! But that is just like Mr. Antis, and all that set, for that matter. You thought so much of him—nobody like Mr. Antis—and now, because he has got all he wants of you, or has got somebody he wants to put into the place, he turns you off without a moment's warning. I dare say Jeduthun Cooke is at the bottom of it. It would be quite in the line of his tremendous piety."
"If you will listen a moment, Flora, you will see that you are making bricks without straw," said Eben. "It was Mr. Francis that turned me off. Mr. Antis had nothing to do with the matter."