t.

"He acts just as if he had lost his money."

Dolly did not know what to say. She had had the same impression. To her
inexperience, this did not seem the first of evils; but she guessed it
would wear another face to her mother.

"And if he _has_," Mrs. Copley went on, "I am sure I wish we were at
home. England is no sort of a place for poor folks."

"Why should you think he has, mother?"

"I _don't_ think he has," Mrs. Copley flamed out. "But if he hasn't, I
think he has lost his wits."

"That would be worse," said Dolly, smiling, though she felt anything
but merry.

"I don't know about that. Nobody'll ask about your wits, if you've got
money; and if you _haven't_, Dolly, nobody'll care what else you have."

"Mother, I think it is good to have one's treasure where one cannot
lose it."

"I thought I had that when I married your father," said Mrs. Copley,
beginning to cry. This was a very strange thing to Dolly and very
terrible. Her mother's nerves, if irritable, had always been wont to
show themselves of the soundest. Dolly saw it was not all nerves; that
she was troubled by some unspoken cause of anxiety; and she herself
underwent nameless pangs of fear at this corroboration of her own
doubts, while she was soothing and caressing and arguing her mother
into confidence again. The success was only partial, and both of them
carried careful hearts to bed.

A day or two more passed without any variation in the state of things;
except that old Peters the gardener made his appearance, and began to
reduce the wilderness outside to some order. Dolly spent a good deal of
time in the garden with him; tying up rose trees, taking counsel, even
pulling up weeds and setting plants. That was outside refreshment;
within, things were unchanged. Mr. Copley wrote that he would run down
Saturday, or, if he could not, he would send Lawrence. "Why shouldn't
he come himself?" said Mrs. Copley; and, Why should he send Lawrence?
thought Dolly. She liked it better without him. She was pleasing
herself in her garden; finding little ways of activity that delighted
her in and out of the house; getting wonted; and she did not care for
the constraint of anybody's presence who must be treated as company.
One thing she determined upon, however; Lawrence should not make the
next visit with her at Brierley House; and to prevent it, she would go
at once by herself.

She went that afternoon, and by an easier way of approach to the place.