’Yes; and I’ll begin to-morrow, certainly with—­But, Mary, I will not say another word to-night.  Give me a kiss, dearest, and I’ll go.’

Mary did kiss him, and he did go.  But as she was still lingering in the room, putting away a book, or a reel of thread, and then sitting down to think what the morrow would bring forth, the doctor again came into the room in his dressing-gown, and with the slippers on.

‘What, not gone yet?’ said he.

‘No, not yet; I’m going now.’

’You and I, Mary, have always affected a good deal of indifference as to money, and all that sort of thing.’

‘I won’t acknowledge that it has been an affectation at all,’ she answered.

‘Perhaps not; but we have often expressed it, have we not?’

’I suppose, uncle, you think that we are like the fox that lost his tail, or rather some unfortunate fox that might be born without one.’

’I wonder how we should either of us bear it if we found ourselves suddenly rich.  It would be a great temptation—­a sore temptation.  I fear, Mary, that when poor people talk disdainfully of money, they often are like your fox, born without a tail.  If nature suddenly should give that beast a tail, would he not be prouder of it than all the other foxes in the wood?’

’Well, I suppose he would.  That’s the very meaning of the story.  But how moral you’ve become all of a sudden, at twelve o’clock at night!  Instead of being Mrs Radcliffe, I shall think you’re Mr Aesop.’

He took up the article which he had come to seek, and kissing her again on the forehead, went away to his bed-room without further speech.  ’What can he mean by all this about money?’ said Mary to herself.  ’It cannot be that by Sir Louis’s death he will get any of all this property;’ and then she began to bethink herself whether, after all, she would wish him to be a rich man.  ’If he were very rich, he might do something to assist Frank; and then—­’

There never was a fox yet without a tail who would not be delighted to find himself suddenly possessed of that appendage.  Never; let the untailed fox have been ever so sincere in his advice to his friends!  We are all of us, the good and the bad, looking for tails—­for one tail, or for more than one; we do so too often by ways that are mean enough:  but perhaps there is no tail-seeker more mean, more sneakingly mean than he who looks out to adorn his bare back by a tail by marriage.

The doctor was up very early the next morning, long before Mary was ready with her teacups.  He was up, and in his own study behind the shop, arranging dingy papers, pulling about tin boxes which he had brought down with him from London, and piling on his writing-table one set of documents in one place, and one in another.  ’I think I understand it all,’ said he; ’but yet I know I shall be bothered.  Well, I never will be anyone’s trustee again.  Let me see!’ and then he sat down, and with bewildered look recapitulated to himself sundry heavy items.  ’What those shares are really worth I cannot understand, and nobody seems to be able to tell one.  They must make it out among them as best they can.  Let me see; that’s Boxall Hill, and this is Greshamsbury.  I’ll put a newspaper over Greshamsbury, or the squire will know it!’ and then, having made his arrangements, he went to his breakfast.