54
explained it by saying his customers� presence
worried him and he locked himself in to avoid them.
  Haney says Mort is sadly changed.  Cahill, by the bye,
goes over to live with the Thomsons � Mort has work for
him to do.       To night there�s a return-party at
Oxford St, the Edwards� and all the folks going.
I got an invite through Haney, but didn�t �feel like
going.�  Am rather low-spirited. Yester-evening, in
return for a perfectly courteous and good-humored re-
monstrance about an unimportant matter (coals dis-
proportioned to my stove being supplied, with the result
of it�s not warming the room and necessitating inflicting
the job of lighting it again by the already overworked
servant)  I received from the woman of this house a
cowardly insult.   I owed her $25..25.  She hinted
at this as only a low, mean nature can hint.  Now
I am never an hour in debt without being more or less
morbidly alive to it, I have lived here three years,
for the most part paying promptly, and she knows how
sickness and ill-luck have pressed me this year.   I rai-
sed the money to-day � not by borrowing � and paid
her her damned pound of flesh without a word.  But
the affair has temporarily knocked all cheerful
spirits out of me.  So I sit alone, at work, and the
twice-lit fire burning with a gusty noise.  I couldn�t
be mirthful at Parton�s to night.  Though God bless
all the folks, there.