"I was ashamed."
"But you need not have been. You should not have been left to suffer deprivations like these."
"I knew that, very well; but after all that has happened, I wished to bury myself, and never see the face of an old friend again. I hoped to live through, until my hand got well, and then I could have gone to work again."
"Work? What work?"
"You know I had partly larnt a trade once—pity I ever left it!—and as I retained knowledge enough of the use of tools to make common bedsteads, after my school run down, and my visions of property all vanished, I engaged in that business, and have contrived to get a poor living by it ever since, until I cut my hand so dreadfully."
"But your wife—cannot she do something with her needle?"
"What! that woman?"——
He paused, and heaved a deep sigh. It was a bitter exclamation, from the heart.
"No," he continued. "She has no faculty for getting along. She does nothing but harass my life out."
"A misfortune, in—