"Do? Go without them," he promptly replied.
"You know very well we can't go without clothes, papa."
"Then go to the devil," papa said, and getting up slouched from the room.
Bernard, too, who was more afraid of the altered man than Bessie, and for long shrank from any conversation with him, was at last induced by his mother to consult his father as to his own future.
"There isn't much use that I can see, sir, in my sweating away at my books for this exam," he said.
"Oh? Why not?"
"Supposing that I get through it, what am I to do then?"
"You must do the best you can. This Senior Cambridge Exam, they tell me, is a door to any of the professions."
"But you want money to enter a profession, sir. From what I hear we have none."
"Your hearing has not played you false in that direction. What I had you managed to spend, among you. I was the goose that laid the golden egg; now circumstances forbid my laying any more—for a time. You must look after yourselves."