The Prime Minister

and resented it in her heart. But Mrs. Lopez recognised the name in a moment, and went down to her in the parlour, leaving Mr. Wharton upstairs. Mrs. Parker, smarting from her present grievance, had bent her mind on complaining at once of the treatment she had received from the servant, but the sight of the widow’s weeds quelled her. Emily had never been much given to fine clothes, either as a girl or as a married woman; but it had always been her husband’s pleasure that she should be well dressed⁠—though he had never carried his trouble so far as to pay the bills; and Mrs. Parker’s remembrance of her friend at Dovercourt had been that of a fine lady in bright apparel. Now a black shade⁠—something almost like a dark ghost⁠—glided into the room, and Mrs. Parker forgot her recent injury. Emily came forward and offered her hand, and was the first to speak. “I have had a great sorrow since we met,” she said.

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Lopez. I don’t think there is anything left in the world now except sorrow.”

“I hope Mr. Parker is well. Will you not sit down, Mrs. Parker?”

“Thank you, ma’am. Indeed, then, he is not well at all. How should he be well? Everything⁠—everything has been taken away from him.” Poor Emily groaned as she heard this. “I wouldn’t say a word against them as is gone, Mrs. Lopez, if I could help it. I know it is bad to bear when him who once loved you isn’t no more. And perhaps it is all the worse when things didn’t go well with him, and it was, maybe, his own fault. I wouldn’t do it, Mrs. Lopez, if I could help it.”

“Let me hear what you have to say,” said Emily, determined to suffer everything patiently.

“Well;⁠—it is just this. He has left us that bare that there is nothing left. And that, they say, isn’t the worst of all⁠—though what can be worse than doing that, how is a woman to think? Parker was that soft, and he had that way with him of talking, that he has talked me and mine out of the very linen on our backs.”

“What do you mean by saying that that is not the worst?”

“They’ve come upon Sexty for a bill for four hundred and fifty⁠—something to do with that stuff they call Bios⁠—and Sexty says it isn’t his name at all. But he’s been in that state he don’t hardly know how to swear to anything. But he’s sure he didn’t sign it. The bill was brought to him by Lopez, and there was words between them, and he wouldn’t have nothing to do with it. How is he to go to law? And it don’t make much difference neither, for they can’t take much more from him than they have taken.” Emily as she heard all this sat shivering, trying to repress her groans. “Only,” continued Mrs. Parker, “they hadn’t sold the furniture, and I was thinking they might let me stay in the house, and try to do with letting lodgings⁠—and now they’re seizing everything along of this bill. Sexty is like a madman, swearing this and swearing that;⁠—but what can he do, Mrs. Lopez? It’s as like his hand as two peas; but he was clever at everything was⁠—was⁠—you know who I mean, ma’am.” Then Emily covered her face with her hands and burst into violent tears. She had not determined whether she did or did not believe this last accusation made against her husband. She had had hardly time to realise the criminality of the offence imputed. But she did believe that the woman before her had been ruined by her husband’s speculations. “It’s very bad, ma’am; isn’t it?” said Mrs. Parker, crying for company. “It’s bad all round. If you had five children as hadn’t bread you’d know how it is that I feel. I’ve got to go back by the 10:15 tonight, and when I’ve paid for a third-class ticket I shan’t have but twopence left in the world.”

This utter depth of immediate poverty, this want of bread for the morrow and the next day, Emily could relieve out of her own pocket. And, thinking of this and remembering that her purse was not with her at the moment, she started up with the idea of getting it. But it occurred to her that that would not suffice; that her duty required more of her than that. And yet, by her own power, she could do no more. From month to month, almost from week to week, since her husband’s death, her father had been called upon to satisfy claims for money which he would not resist, lest by doing so he should add to her misery. She had felt that she ought to bind herself to the strictest personal economy because of the miserable losses to which she had subjected him by her ill-starred marriage. “What would you wish me to do?” she said, resuming her seat.

“You are rich,” said Mrs. Parker. Emily shook her head. “They say your papa is rich. I thought you would not like to see me in want like this.”

“Indeed, indeed, it makes me very unhappy.”

“Wouldn’t your papa do something? It wasn’t Sexty’s fault nigh so much as it was his. I wouldn’t say it to you if it wasn’t for starving. I wouldn’t say it to you if it wasn’t for the children. I’d lie in the ditch and die if it was only myself, because⁠—because I know what your feelings is. But what wouldn’t you do, and what wouldn’t you say, if you had five children at home as hadn’t a loaf of bread among ’em?” Hereupon Emily got up and left the room, bidding her visitor wait for a few minutes. Presently the offensive butler came in, who had wronged Mrs. Parker by watching his master’s coats, and brought a tray with meat and wine. Mr. Wharton, said the altered man,