and! That it could be her own fault in
any degree she did not for a moment admit. It was the fault of those
around her, and she was not the woman to allow such a fault to pass
unavenged.

"Father," she would say, "you will be in the workhouse before this
new year is ended."

"I hope not, my child."

"Hope! What's the good of hoping? You will. And where am I to go
then? Mother left a handsome fortune behind her, and this is what
you've brought us to."

"I've done everything for the best, Maryanne."

"Why didn't you give that man the money when you had it? You'd have
had a home then when you'd ruined yourself. Now you'll have no home;
neither shall I."

All this was very hard to be borne. "She nags at me that dreadful,
George," he once said, as he sat in his old arm-chair, with his head
hanging wearily on his chest, "that I don't know where I am or what
I'm doing. As for the workhouse, I almost wish I was there."

She would go also to Poppins' lodgings, and there quarrel with her
old friend Polly. It may be that at this time she did not receive
all the respect that had been paid to her some months back, and this
reverse was, to her proud spirit, unendurable. "Polly," she said, "if
you wish to turn your back upon me, you can do so. But I won't put up
with your airs."

"There's nobody turning their back upon you, only yourself,"
Polly replied; "but it's frightful to hear the way you're always
a-grumbling;--as if other people hadn't had their ups and downs
besides you."

Robinson also was taught by the manner of his friend Poppins that he
could not now expect to receive that high deference which was paid
to him about the time that Johnson of Manchester had been in the
ascendant. Those had been the halcyon days of the firm, and Robinson
had then been happy. Men at that time would point him out as he
passed, as one worthy of notice; his companions felt proud when
he would join them; and they would hint to him, with a mysterious
reverence that was very gratifying, their assurance that he was so
deeply occupied as to make it impossible that he should give his time
to the ordinary slow courtesies of life. All this was over now, and
he felt that he was pulled down with rough hands from the high place
which he had occupied.

"It's all very well," Poppins would say to him, "but the fact is,
you're a-doing of nothing."

"If fourteen hours a day--" began Robinson. But Poppins instantly
stopped him.

"Fourteen hours'