"On the Brewers' carts. 'Forcus and Sons; Brewers.'"
"It's a name I ain't ashamed of, and one that's pretty well known, at any rate!"
"And my name, or my mother's name, is over a shop-doorway, 'licensed to sell tobacco and snuff'; and it's a name that we can't be proud of, Reggie."
"But I'll put up with it, Deleah. I've made up my mind, and I'll go through with it. The name wouldn't be yours any longer, dear, when you'd taken mine; and as for the grocer's shop--"
"Why, here it is!" Deleah said. "And so good-bye, Reggie."
"And you're not going to? You're not very polite or kind to me, Deleah, upon my word!"
"Indeed, I am very, very kind, Reggie. And that you'll say when you are wiser. And so, good-bye. Run away and get wiser, Reggie."
"Deleah, something must be done for Bernard," Mrs. Day said with desperation in her tone. She had called the girl into her bedroom to hold conference away from the excitable Bessie. "Something I must do for my poor boy, or I feel that I shall go out of my senses. You must help me to do something, Deleah. Look at this."
From her pocket she drew forth a letter received that morning from the unhappy son. Deleah read it with a painful mingling of pity and contempt.
It was indeed an afflicting letter for any mother to receive; and Mrs. Day had too long been fed on the bread of affliction.
"You see, he begs of me to do something--to buy him off."
"Don't, dear! Your blaming him makes it worse for me to bear, not better. Somehow this thing must be done--_somehow_, if I am to know any peace, to be able to go on. Deleah, Reggie Forcus would do anything for you. Ask Reggie Forcus to do this."
"My account is overdrawn at the Bank. I dare not ask for a further amount. What would these few pounds be to him? He spends as much on a dinner for a few men at the Royal."
"I can't ask him. Can't you see I must not?"
"I see what you mean. But oh, Deleah, we seem to have come to the bottom of things. What to us, in the very depths, are all those rules and niceties that happier people observe? You see what my boy says? He is 'in hell.' He says it in so many words. My boy! My Bernard!"
With that Mrs. Day flung her arms upon the table by which she was sitting, and her head upon her arms, and gave way to bitter weeping: "My boy! My boy! My poor dear, precious Bernard!" she sobbed despairingly.