at some L40,000. But what had been
quickly gained proved just as easy to lose.

At his death Aphra kept on the spinning mill, and for a time made a
brave face to adverse fortune. But a combination among bigger
employers froze her out. The mill failed, and with it was engulfed the
wealth of her sisters and the portion of her one brother. Hitherto
Jeremy had behaved more humanly than any of the others, learning the
business of the mill, with the hope that some day he might be able to
conduct one of his own. But the sudden failure of all his hopes
overthrew an ill-balanced brain. He grew wild and untamable in his
habits, only appearing at home at rare intervals, and then only to
claim more and more money from his sister.

The others, Honorine, Camilla and Sidonia, mentioned the name of their
eldest sister with a kind of awe, but Jeremy never without a sneer or a
taunt--except only in her presence, and when taxed with digging in the
garden, a habit for which, Honorine whispered, Aphra was accustomed to
punish him severely.

After their failure in Wigham, the passage of the Orrin family
southward through England is marked only by some vague reminiscences of
Honorine. She would begin a sentence "When we were at Bristol" and end
it with "This happened after Aphra had brought us to Leeds."
Nevertheless the nodded confirmations of the other two sisters,
silently listening as they twisted their fingers, together with the
"humphs" and denials of Jeremy, let me understand the truth with
sufficient clearness.

If Aphra had been alone, unsaddled with her flock of mad folk, whom she
treated like grown-up children, yet loved with more than sisterly
devotion, she would have had no difficulty in providing for herself.

At Bristol, for instance, she had established herself with what
remained of their small capital in a ready-made shoe shop in a
well-frequented street, while Honorine and Sidonia interpreted the
latest London fashions to the dwellers in Clifton. But the latter
branch failed because Honorine refused to serve those customers who, on
entering the shop, would not consent to bow the knee and worship the
statue of the Virgin, which they kept in a wall niche surrounded with
ever-burning candles. This did not at all suit the ideas of the
Cliftonians, and soon the two sisters were back hanging on as before to
the skirts of Aphra. As for Jeremy, he wandered about the docks,
finding mysterious means of filling his pock