r," he said, faltering. "You must not think me
presumptuous, May. But the first thing to be done is to get him out of
his difficulties, if he is in difficulties--and you must let me help to
do it. I think you and I should go out and see about it at once."

"Go--where?" Reginald, like most young people, had taken little notice
of his father's proceedings. So long as things went smoothly, what had
he to do with them? When there was a pressure for money, he knew he
should hear of it, at least in the shape of reproaches and sneers from
his father at his useless life, and the expenses of the family. But even
these reproaches had died away of late, since Reginald had possessed an
income of his own, and since the revenues of the Parsonage had been
increased by Clarence Copperhead. Reginald was more helpless than a
stranger. He did not know where to turn. "Do you think we could ask him?
I am almost of Janey's opinion. I don't think he is so ill as he seems."

And then they all paused and looked again into the room. The nurse was
moving softly about, putting everything in order, and Mr. May watched
her from the bed with the keenest attention. His face was still livid
and ghastly in colour; but his eyes had never been so full of eager fire
in all the experience of his children. He watched the woman with a close
attention which was appalling; sometimes he would put his covering half
aside as if with the intention of making a spring. He was like some
imprisoned animal seeing a possibility of escape. They looked at him,
and then at each other, with a miserable helplessness. What could they
do? He was their father, but they knew nothing about him, and just
because he was their father they were more slow to understand, more dull
in divining his secrets than if he had been a stranger. When there came
at last a suggestion out of the silence, it was Northcote who spoke.

"I don't see how you can leave him, May. It is plain he wants watching.
I will go if you will let me--if Ursula will say I may," said the young
man with a little break in his voice. This roused them all to another
question, quite different from the first one. Her brother and sister
looked at Ursula, one with a keen pang of involuntary envy, the other
with a sharp thrill of pleasurable excitement. Oddly enough they could
all of them pass by their father and leave him out of the question, more
easily, with less strain of mind, than strangers could. Ursula for her
part did