."

"I can't bear the suspense. Why didn't you tell him outright you wouldn't
go back on any terms?"

"I might as well, and got the glory. He'll never move Dryfoos. I suppose
we both would like to go back, if we could."

"Oh, I suppose so."

They could not regain their lost exaltation, their lost dignity. At
dinner Mrs. March asked the children how they would like to go back to
Boston to live.

"Why, we're not going, are we?" asked Tom, without enthusiasm.

"I was just wondering how you felt about it, now," she said, with an
underlook at her husband.

"Well, if we go back," said Bella, "I want to live on the Back Bay. It's
awfully Micky at the South End."

"I suppose I should go to Harvard," said Tom, "and I'd room out at
Cambridge. It would be easier to get at you on the Back Bay."

The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and, in view of these grand
expectations of his children, March resolved to go as far as he could in
meeting Dryfoos's wishes. He proposed the theatre as a distraction from
the anxieties that he knew were pressing equally on his wife. "We might
go to the 'Old Homestead,'" he suggested, with a sad irony, which only
his wife felt.

"Oh yes, let's!" cried Bella.

While they were getting ready, some one rang, and Bella went to the door,
and then came to tell her father that it was Mr. Lindau. "He says he
wants to see you just a moment. He's in the parlor, and he won't sit
down, or anything."

"What can he want?" groaned Mrs. March, from their common dismay.

March apprehended a storm in the old man's face. But he only stood in the
middle of the room, looking very sad and grave. "You are Going oudt," he
said. "I won't geep you long. I haf gome to pring pack dose macassines
and dis mawney. I can't do any more voark for you; and I can't geep the
mawney you haf baid me a'ready. It iss not hawnest mawney--that hass been
oarned py voark; it iss mawney that hass peen mate py sbeculation, and
the obbression off lapor, and the necessity of the boor, py a man--Here
it is, efery tollar, efery zent. Dake it; I feel as if dere vas ploodt on
it."

"Why, Lindau," March began, but the old man interrupted him.

"Ton't dalk to me, Passil! I could not haf believedt it of you. When you
know how I feel about dose tings, why tidn't you dell me whose mawney you
bay oudt to me? Ach, I ton't plame you--I ton't rebroach you. You haf
nefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I must
sha