get in the way of microbes they have to be ill and they have to call in a physician, and some few of them pay him, so he can manage at least to live.  Of course law is different.  If people haven’t any money they can forego quarrels, unless they are forced upon them.  Quarrels are luxuries.  It really began to seem to me that all the opportunity for a lawyer in Banbridge was in the simple line of suing some one for debt, and there is always that way, which does seem to me rather dishonest, of putting the property out of one’s hands.”

There was undoubtedly much truth in what Mrs. Sylvia Anderson said.  She was a shrewd old woman, with such a softly feminine manner that she misled people into thinking the contrary.  Banbridge folk rather pitied Randolph Anderson for having such a sweetly helpless and incapable mother, albeit very pretty and very much of a lady.

Mrs. Anderson was a large woman, but delicately articulated, with small hands, and such tiny feet that she toppled a little when she walked.  Her complexion was like a child’s, and she fluffed her thick white locks over her ears and swathed her throat high in soft laces, concealing all the aged lines in face and figure with innocent feminine arts.

Randolph adored his mother.  He had never cared for any other woman.  He had sat at his mother’s little feet all his life, although he had at times his own masculine way, as in the matter of the deserting of his profession for trade.  He had remained firm, although his mother had said much against it.

“Frankly, I do not approve of it, dear,” she said.  “I agree, but I do not approve.  I do not like it, that you should desert the trodden path of your forebears.  It is not so much that I am proud, but I am conservative.  I believe there is a certain harmony between the man and the road his race have travelled.  I believe he is a very sorry figure on another, especially if it be on a lower level.”

“I don’t think it is a question of level,” said Randolph.  “A road is simply a question of progress.”

“Well, perhaps,” said his mother, “but in that case the state of things is the same.  A grocer would cut a sorry figure on your road, even if it ran parallel towards the same goal, and a lawyer would cut a sorry figure on a grocer’s.  Frankly, dear, I really doubt if you will make a good grocer.”

Randolph laughed.  “At least I hope I can earn our bread-and-butter,” he said.  Then he went on seriously.  “It is just here,” he said—­“you and I are not sordid.  Neither of us cares about money for itself, but here we are on this earth, with that existence which has its money price, and obligations imposed upon us.  We cannot shirk it.  We must live, and in order to live we must have a certain amount of money.  Now all we have in this world for material goods is this old house and your little pittance.  We have not a cent besides.  If we were to try living on that, it would not last out your lifetime.