“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!”