Mrs. Day surveyed these signs of comfort and luxury with a numb feeling at
her heart. All this, and such as this, would have to go. How would the
children endure life without it. Was this lavish amount of food
"extravagance"? she asked herself, for the first time. Was it possible
she, with her well-filled table on which she had prided herself, had
conduced to the misfortune? She was a woman whose conscience was very
easily touched, and she began to blame herself. "But I never dreamed!" she
said, "I never dreamed!"
Bessie could eat neither fish nor kidneys, that morning. "Mama, there was
some game-pie left, last night. Mayn't I have some of it?"
The servant was rung for to bring the game-pie. "If there are any oyster
patties we might have them in, mother," Bernard suggested.
The mother, sadly gazing, assented. Nothing would she have denied them,
that morning--her poor children who were so soon to be deprived of
game-pies and oysters for ever!
They were in the midst of breakfast, their voices a little subdued because
mama was not well, yet with an enjoyable sense of freedom because papa,
who was so often irritable at that meal, had not yet come down, when
suddenly the door opened and without any announcement Mr.
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