e heard singing, and though the music was a hymn, it rolled out
so roundly, so fully, so whole-heartedly, that he knew his uncle must
be out.

The three were alone at the piano, and the young man's face brightened
at the sight of the children. On either side of their mother Bella and
Gardiner were singing with delight the little boy's favorite hymn.

"No parting yonder,
All light and song,
The while I ponder
And say 'how long
Shall time me sunder
From that glad throng?'"

Curious how syllables and tones and inflections can contain and hold our
feelings, and how their memory makes a winding-sheet.

Fairfax came in quietly, and the singers finished their hymn. Then the
children fell upon him and, as Gardiner said, "Cousin Antony _always
did_," he "gobbled them up."

"You might have _told_ us you were ill," Bella reproved him. "When I
heard I made some wine jelly for you, but it wobbled away, and Gardiner
drank it."

"It wasn't _weal_ wine," said the little boy, "or _weal_ jelly...."

Fairfax glanced toward his aunt, unconsciously looking to her for
comfort on this trying day.

Mrs. Carew was truly embarrassed at the sight of her creditor, but she
continued to play lightly among the hymns, and gave him up to the
children. But Fairfax was too desperate to be set aside. If there was
any comfort anywhere he was going to have it. He said to his aunt in a
voice deepened by feeling--

"Aunt Caroline, I'm a little down on my luck."

The lady turned her doe-like eyes on her nephew. "My dear Tony...."

He clenched his vigorous hands to keep down his emotion.

"Yes. Cedersholm has turned his back on me, as far as I can see."

With a short laugh he threw off his intense mood, thoroughly ashamed of
his weakness.

"_Our_ branch of the family, Aunt Caroline, are unlucky all round, I
reckon."

There was one thought uppermost in his aunt's mind. _She had no money
with which to pay her debt to him._ When there weren't lamps to buy
there were rugs and figures of _biscuit_ Venuses bending over _biscuit_
streams. She had confessed her vice; she "adored bric-a-brac." The
jumble in her mind made her eyes more vague than ever.

"Will you go back South?" she wondered.

He started, spread out his empty hands. "Go back to mother like this?
Auntie!"

As ineffectual as she had been on the night of his arrival, so now Mrs.
Carew sat ineffectual before his crisis. She breathed, "My poor boy!