this room except the cottage and that i have left to let i want to get a bed for this gentleman to night to save expense perhaps you can make up something here for myself anything will do it s only for to night we talk about this more to morrow i was roused from my amazement and concern for her � i am sure for her � by her falling on my neck for a moment and crying that she only grieved for me in another moment she suppressed this emotion and said with an aspect more triumphant than dejected we must meet boldly and not suffer them to frighten us my dear we must learn to act the play out we must live misfortune down trot op david chapter depression as soon as i could recover my presence of mind which quite deserted me in the first overpowering shock of my aunt s intelligence i proposed to mr dick to come round to the s shop and take possession of the bed which mr had lately the s shop being in market and market being a very different place in those days there was a low wooden before the door not very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used to live in the old weather glass which pleased mr dick the glory of lodging over this structure would have him i dare say for many but as there were really few to bear beyond the compound of i have already mentioned and perhaps the want of a more elbow room he was perfectly charmed with his accommodation mrs had indignantly assured him that there wasn t room to swing a cat there but as mr dick justly observed to me sitting down on the foot of the bed nursing his leg you know i don t want to swing a cat i never do swing a cat therefore what does that signify to me i tried to ascertain whether mr dick had any understanding of the causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt s affairs as i might have expected he had none at all the only account he could give of it was that my aunt had said to him the day before yesterday now dick are you really and truly the philosopher i take you for that then he had said yes he hoped so that then my aunt had said dick i am ruined that then he had said oh indeed that then my aunt had praised him highly which he was very glad of and that then they had come to me and had had porter and on the road mr dick was so very complacent sitting on the foot of the bed nursing his leg and telling me this with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile that i am sorry to say i was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress want and starvation but i was soon bitterly for this by seeing his face turn pale and tears course down his lengthened cheeks while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine i took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than i had taken to him and i soon understood as i ought to have known at first that he had been so confident merely because of his faith in the wisest and most wonderful of women and his unbounded reliance on my intellectual resources the latter i believe he considered a match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal what can we do said mr dick there s the memorial � the personal history and experience to be sure there is said i but all we can do just now mr dick is to keep a cheerful countenance and not let my aunt see that we are thinking about it he assented to this in the most earnest manner and implored me if i should see him wandering an inch out of the right course to him by some of those superior methods which were always at my command but regret to state that the fright i had given him proved too much for his best attempts at concealment all the evening his eyes wandered to my aunt s face with an expression of the most dismal apprehension as if he saw her growing thin on the spot he was conscious of this and put a upon his head but his keeping that immovable and sitting rolling his eyes like a piece of machinery did not mend the matter at all i saw him look at the loaf at supper which happened to be a small one as if nothing else stood between us and famine and when my aunt insisted on his making his customary i detected him in the act of fragments of his bread and cheese i have no doubt for the purpose of us with those when we should have reached an advanced stage of my aunt on the other hand was in a composed frame of mind which was a lesson to all of us � to me i am sure she was extremely gracious to except when i called her by that name and strange as i knew she felt in london appeared quite at home she was to have my bed and i was to be in the sitting room to keep guard over her she made a great point of being so near the river in case of a and i suppose really did find some satisfaction in that circumstance trot my dear said my aunt when she saw me making preparations for her usual night draught no nothing aunt not wine my dear ale but there is wine here aunt and you always have it made of wine keep that in case of sickness 