"You've been smoking too much."
"My pipe is the only real comfort I have left."
"James," she cried, expostulatingly, "you forget me!"
"There was a time," he said, "when you were my good companion, but that takes me back a long, long while ago. And the children are not children now, and altogether—I beg pardon, my dear. I ought not to be saying anything likely to hurt."
"If matters are so bad, we must try a little economy." Mrs. Hillier had a sudden inspiration. "I've sent off a couple of the maids already."
"You'll have to do more than that."
"You don't mean," she cried, alarmedly, "that we shall have to do without Weston?"
He gave a half smile at me; I waited anxiously to hear what he would say. "We shall have to do without everybody," he said. "It's like this. I've been working all these years to make money for you and the kiddies. I've never saved, partly because you gave no help in that direction, partly because I wanted to look on and see everyone having a capital time."
"How selfish of you, James!" I touched her arm reprovingly.
"The sooner we get away from here," he said, "the better for my good name. I want to keep that because—because it's about all I shall have left. The only question that's worrying me is this. What sort of a part are you going to play?"