l do and won't do; this is the only thing you can
do; you have got to make a living, and you have got to pay your debts;
beggars can't be choosers. The fact is, you have all lived on charity
so long that you have got demoralised."

Violet flushed. "Really," she began to say, "though you have helped us
once or twice, I don't think you have the right to insult--" but Mrs.
Polkington raised a quieting hand; she did not wish to offend her
brother.

He was not offended; he only spoke his mind rather plainly to them
all, which, though it did no harm, did little good either; they were
too old in their sins to profit by that now. After some more
unpleasant talk all round, the family conclave broke up; Mr. Frazer
came home, and every one went to bed.

Mr. Ponsonby had Julia's tiny room; there was nowhere else for him,
seeing Violet and her husband had the one she and her youngest sister
shared in their maiden days. Julia had to content herself with the
drawing-room sofa; it was a very uncomfortable sofa, and the blankets
kept slipping off so she did not sleep a great deal; but that did not
matter much; she had the more time to think things over. Dawn found
her sitting at the table wrapped in her blanket, writing by the light
of one of the piano candles; she glanced up as the first cold light
struggled in, and her face was very grave, it looked old, too, and
tired, with the weariness which accompanies renunciation, quite as
often as does peace or a sense of beatitude. She looked at the paper
before her, a completely worked-out table of expenditure, a sort of
statement of ways and means--the means being L50 a year. It could be
done; she knew that during the night when the plan took shape in her
mind; she had proved it to herself more than half-an-hour ago by
figures--but there was no margin. It could only be done by renouncing
that upon which she had set her heart; she could not work out the
scheme and pay the debt of honour to Rawson-Clew. The legacy had at
first seemed a heaven-sent gift for that purpose, but now, like the
blue daffodil, it seemed that it could not be used to pay the debt.
That was not to be paid by a heaven-sent gift any more than by a
devil-helped theft; slow, honest work and patient saving might pay it
in years, but nothing else it seemed. She put her elbows on the table
and propped her chin on her locked hands looking down at the
unanswerable figures, but they still told her the same hard truth.

"I mig