Yet on the surface things were much as they had been.  David rose early, and as he improved in health, read his morning paper in his office while he waited for breakfast.  Doctor Reynolds had gone, and the desk in Dick’s office was back where it belonged.  In the mornings Mike oiled the car in the stable and washed it, his old pipe clutched in his teeth, while from the kitchen came the sounds of pans and dishes, and the odor of frying sausages.  And Dick splashed in the shower, and shaved by the mirror with the cracked glass in the bathroom.  But he did not sing.

The house was very quiet.  Now and then the front door opened, and a patient came in, but there was no longer the crowded waiting-room, the incessant jangle of the telephone, the odor of pungent drugs and antiseptics.

When, shortly before Christmas, Dick looked at the books containing the last quarter’s accounts, he began to wonder how long they could fight their losing battle.  He did not mind for himself, but it was unthinkable that David should do without, one by one, the small luxuries of his old age, his cigars, his long and now errandless rambles behind Nettie.

He began then to think of his property, his for the claiming, and to question whether he had not bought his peace at too great a cost to David.  He knew by that time that it was not fear, but pride, which had sent him back empty-handed, the pride of making his own way.  And now and then, too, he felt a perfectly human desire to let Bassett publish the story as his vindication and then snatch David away from them all, to some luxurious haven where—­that was the point at which he always stopped—­where David could pine away in homesickness for them!

There was an irony in it that made him laugh hopelessly.

He occupied himself then with ways and means, and sold the car.  Reynolds, about to be married and busily furnishing a city office, bought it, had it repainted a bright blue, and signified to the world at large that he was at the Rossiter house every night by leaving it at the curb.  Sometimes, on long country tramps, Dick saw it outside a farmhouse, and knew that the boycott was not limited to the town.

By Christmas, however, he realized that the question of meeting their expenses necessitated further economies, and reluctantly at last they decided to let Mike go.  Dick went out to the stable with a distinct sinking of the heart, while David sat in the house, unhappily waiting for the thing to be done.  But Mike refused to be discharged.

“And is it discharging me you are?” he asked, putting down one of David’s boots in his angry astonishment.  “Well, then, I’m telling you you’re not.”

“We can’t pay you any longer, Mike.  And now that the car’s gone—­”

“I’m not thinking about pay.  I’m not going, and that’s flat.  Who’d be after doing his boots and all?”

David called him in that night and dismissed him again, this time very firmly.  Mike said nothing and went out, but the next morning he was scrubbing the sidewalk as usual, and after that they gave it up.