had to be sold and they moved into a small one in the village. He had been a big, jolly, laughing, generous man before, now he was always quarrelling with everybody, insulting the few patients left to him, and so on. Hesther was wonderful. How she kept the house together all those years nobody knew. There was very little she didn't know about life by the time she was ten years old—ordinary life, I mean, not this damned Crispin monstrosity. She always had the pluck and the courage of the devil, and you can fancy what I felt just now when you told me about her asking young Crispin to let her off. That swine!"
He paused for a moment, then went on hurriedly:
"But we haven't much time. I must buck ahead. I was quite an ordinary sort of fellow, of course, but there was nothing I wouldn't do for her if I got a chance. I helped her sometimes, but not so much as I'd have liked. She was always terribly proud. All the things that happened at home made her hold up her head in a kind of defiance.
"The odd thing was that she loved her father, and the worse he got the more she loved him. But she loved her young brothers still more. She was mother, sister, nurse, everything to them, and would be still if she'd been let alone. They were nice little chaps too, only a lot younger, of course—one three years, one six. One's in the Navy—very de-
