It was possibly my own want of occupation which made me observe with surprise, after a while, how much occupied my father was.  He had expressed himself glad of my return; but now that I had returned, I saw very little of him.  Most of his time was spent in his library, as had always been the case.  But on the few visits I paid him there, I could not but perceive that the aspect of the library was much changed.  It had acquired the look of a business-room, almost an office.  There were large business-like books on the table, which I could not associate with anything he could naturally have to do; and his correspondence was very large.  I thought he closed one of those books hurriedly as I came in, and pushed it away, as if he did not wish me to see it.  This surprised me at the moment without arousing any other feeling; but afterwards I remembered it with a clearer sense of what it meant.  He was more absorbed altogether than I had been used to see him.  He was visited by men sometimes not of very prepossessing appearance.  Surprise grew in my mind without any very distinct idea of the reason of it; and it was not till after a chance conversation with Morphew that my vague uneasiness began to take definite shape.  It was begun without any special intention on my part.  Morphew had informed me that master was very busy, on some occasion when I wanted to see him.  And I was a little annoyed to be thus put off.  “It appears to me that my father is always busy,” I said hastily.  Morphew then began very oracularly to nod his head in assent.

“A deal too busy, sir, if you take my opinion,” he said.

This startled me much, and I asked hurriedly, “What do you mean?” without reflecting that to ask for private information from a servant about my father’s habits was as bad as investigating into a stranger’s affairs.  It did not strike me in the same light.

“Mr. Philip,” said Morphew, “a thing ’as ’appened as ’appens more often than it ought to.  Master has got awful keen about money in his old age.”

“That’s a new thing for him,” I said.

“No, sir, begging your pardon, it ain’t a new thing.  He was once broke of it, and that wasn’t easy done; but it’s come back, if you’ll excuse me saying so.  And I don’t know as he’ll ever be broke of it again at his age.”

I felt more disposed to be angry than disturbed by this.  “You must be making some ridiculous mistake,” I said.  “And if you were not so old a friend as you are, Morphew, I should not have allowed my father to be so spoken of to me.”

The old man gave me a half-astonished, half-contemptuous look.  “He’s been my master a deal longer than he’s been your father,” he said, turning on his heel.  The assumption was so comical that my anger could not stand in face of it.  I went out, having been on my way to the door when this conversation occurred, and took my usual lounge about, which was not a satisfactory sort of amusement.  Its vanity and emptiness appeared to