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192 "Come, archdeacon," said the lady, "we needn't mind that at present. You know you never expected papa to pay the costs."

"Such absurdity is enough to provoke Job," said the archdeacon, marching quickly up and down the room. "Your father is like a child. Eight hundred pounds a-year!—eight hundred and eighty with the house—with nothing to do. The very place for him. And to throw that up because some scoundrel writes an article in a newspaper! Well—I have done my duty. If he chooses to ruin his child I cannot help it;" and he stood still at the fireplace, and looked at himself in a dingy mirror which stood on the chimney-piece.

There was a pause for about a minute, and then the warden, finding that nothing else was coming, lighted his candle, and quietly said, "Good night."

"Good night, papa," said the lady.

And so the warden retired; but, as he closed the door behind him, he heard the well-known ejaculation—slower, lower, more solemn, more ponderous than ever—"Good heavens!"

party met the next morning at breakfast; and a very sombre affair it was—very unlike the breakfasts at Plumstead Episcopi.

There were three thin, small, dry bits of bacon, each an inch long, served up under a huge old plated cover; there were