"
"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M.
Lenoble said you were better."
"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in
mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of
the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich
man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile
Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but
as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge
and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before
me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things
easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not
the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back
to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the
lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends
in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him,
and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for
me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go."
"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help."
"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a
quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from
the workhouse.
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