“It’s not mine!” Anthony cried, in desperation.

“Whose money is it?” said Rhoda, and caught up her hands as from fire.

“My Lord!” Anthony moaned, “if you don’t speak like a Court o’ Justice.  Hear yourself!”

“Is the money yours, uncle?”

“It—­is,” and “isn’t” hung in the balance.

“It is not?” Rhoda dressed the question for him in the terror of contemptuous horror.

“It is.  I—­of course it is; how could it help being mine?  My money?  Yes.  What sort o’ thing’s that to ask—­whether what I’ve got’s mine or yours, or somebody else’s?  Ha!”

“And you say you are not rich, uncle?”

A charming congratulatory smile was addressed to him, and a shake of the head of tender reproach irresistible to his vanity.

“Rich! with a lot o’ calls on me; everybody wantin’ to borrow—­I’m rich!  And now you coming to me!  You women can’t bring a guess to bear upon the right nature o’ money.”

“Uncle, you will decide to help me, I know.”

She said it with a staggering assurance of manner.

“How do you know?” cried Anthony.

“Why do you carry so much money about with you in bags, uncle?”

“Hear it, my dear.”  He simulated miser’s joy.

“Ain’t that music?  Talk of operas!  Hear that; don’t it talk? don’t it chink? don’t it sing?” He groaned “Oh, Lord!” and fell back.

This transition from a state of intensest rapture to the depths of pain alarmed her.

“Nothing; it’s nothing.”  Anthony anticipated her inquiries.  “They bags is so heavy.”

“Then why do you carry them about?”

“Perhaps it’s heart disease,” said Anthony, and grinned, for he knew the soundness of his health.

“You are very pale, uncle.”

“Eh? you don’t say that?”

“You are awfully white, dear uncle.”

“I’ll look in the glass,” said Anthony.  “No, I won’t.”  He sank back in his chair.  “Rhoda, we’re all sinners, ain’t we?  All—­every man and woman of us, and baby, too.  That’s a comfort; yes, it is a comfort.  It’s a tremendous comfort—­shuts mouths.  I know what you’re going to say—­some bigger sinners than others.  If they’re sorry for it, though, what then?  They can repent, can’t they?”

“They must undo any harm they may have done.  Sinners are not to repent only in words, uncle.”

“I’ve been feeling lately,” he murmured.

Rhoda expected a miser’s confession.

“I’ve been feeling, the last two or three days,” he resumed.

“What, uncle?”

“Sort of taste of a tremendous nice lemon in my mouth, my dear, and liked it, till all of a sudden I swallowed it whole—­such a gulp!  I felt it just now.  I’m all right.”

“No, uncle,” said Rhoda:  “you are not all right:  this money makes you miserable.  It does; I can see that it does.  Now, put those bags in my hands.  For a minute, try; it will do you good.  Attend to me; it will.  Or, let me have them.  They are poison to you.  You don’t want them.”