people whom that
cheerful little woman toiled to maintain. It was a thing not to be done
in any way you could contemplate it; and with a heartache the poor young
doctor had turned his horse's head away from Grove Street, and left
Bessie to toil on in her poverty. Bessie had escaped all that nowadays;
but who could have forewarned the poor doctor that his elder brother,
once the hope of the family--that clever Fred, whom all the others had
been postponed to--he who with his evil reputation had driven poor
Edward out of his first practice, and sent him to begin life a second
time at Carlingford--was to drop listlessly in again, and lay a harder
burden than a harmless old father-in-law upon the young man's hands--a
burden which no grateful Bessie shared and sweetened? No wonder black
Care sat at the young doctor's back as he drove at that dangerous pace
through the new, encumbered streets. He might have broken his neck over
those heaps of brick and mortar, and it is doubtful whether he would
have greatly cared.

When Dr Rider went home that night, the first sight he saw when he
pulled up at his own door was his brother's large indolent shabby figure
prowling up the street. In the temper he was then in, this was not
likely to soothe him. It was not a much-frequented street, but the young
doctor knew instinctively that his visitor had been away in the heart of
the town at the booksellers' shops buying cheap novels, and ordering
them magnificently to be sent to Dr Rider's; and could guess the curious
questions and large answers which had followed. He sprang to the ground
with a painful suppressed indignation, intensified by many mingled
feelings, and waited the arrival of the maudlin wanderer. Ah me! one
might have had some consolation in the burden freely undertaken for
love's sake, and by love's self shared and lightened: but this load of
disgrace and ruin which nobody could take part of--which it was misery
so much as to think that anybody knew of--the doctor's fraternal
sentiments, blunted by absence and injury, were not strong enough to
bear that weight.

"So, Fred, you have been out," said Dr Rider, moodily, as he stood aside
on his own threshold to let his brother pass in--not with the courtesy
of a host, but the precaution of a jailer, to see him safe before he
himself entered and closed the door.

"Yes, you can't expect a man to sit in the house for ever," said the
prodigal, stumbling in to his brother's favourite