“You say it’s cruel!” she cried with a sort of triumph.  “Oh, I knowed you would, or any true gentleman that don’t hold with screwing poor folks.  Just go and say that to him inside there for the love of God.  Tell him to think what he’s doing, driving poor creatures to despair.  Summer’s coming, the Lord be praised, but yet it’s bitter cold at night with your counterpane gone; and when you’ve been working hard all day, and nothing but four bare walls to come home to, and all your poor little sticks of furniture that you’ve saved up for, and got together one by one, all gone, and you no better than when you started, or rather worse, for then you was young.  Oh, sir!” the woman’s voice rose into a sort of passionate wail.  And then she added, beseechingly, recovering herself, “Oh, speak for us; he’ll not refuse his own son—­”

“To whom am I to speak?  Who is it that has done this to you?” I said.

The woman hesitated again, looking keenly in my face, then repeated with a slight faltering, “It’s Mr. Philip?” as if that made everything right.

“Yes; I am Philip Canning,” I said; “but what have I to do with this? and to whom am I to speak?”

She began to whimper, crying and stopping herself.  “Oh, please, sir! it’s Mr. Canning as owns all the house property about; it’s him that our court and the lane and everything belongs to.  And he’s taken the bed from under us, and the baby’s cradle, although it’s said in the Bible as you’re not to take poor folks’ bed.”

“My father!” I cried in spite of myself; “then it must be some agent, some one else in his name.  You may be sure he knows nothing of it.  Of course I shall speak to him at once.”

“Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the woman.  But then she added, in a lower tone, “It’s no agent.  It’s one as never knows trouble.  It’s him that lives in that grand house.”  But this was said under her breath, evidently not for me to hear.

Morphew’s words flashed through my mind as she spoke.  What was this?  Did it afford an explanation of the much-occupied hours, the big books, the strange visitors?  I took the poor woman’s name, and gave her something to procure a few comforts for the night, and went indoors disturbed and troubled.  It was impossible to believe that my father himself would have acted thus; but he was not a man to brook interference, and I did not see how to introduce the subject, what to say.  I could but hope that, at the moment of broaching it, words would be put into my mouth, which often happens in moments of necessity, one knows not how, even when one’s theme is not so all-important as that for which such help has been promised.  As usual, I did not see my father till dinner.  I have said that our dinners were very good, luxurious in a simple way, everything excellent in its kind, well cooked, well served,—­the perfection of comfort without show,—­which is a combination very dear to the English heart.  I said nothing till Morphew, with his solemn attention to everything that was going, had retired; and then it was with some strain of courage that I began.