But the crisis which had looked so near delayed! Poor Reuben! The morning after his sudden show of spirit to David he felt himself, to his own miserable surprise, no more courageous than he had been before it.

Yet the impression made had gone too deep to end in nothingness.

He contracted a habit of getting by himself in the fields and puzzling his brain with figures--an occupation so unfamiliar and exhausting that it wore him a good deal; and Hannah, when he came in at night, would wonder, with a start, whether he were beginning 'to break up.' But it possessed him more and more.

Hannah would not give up the money, but David must have his rights.

How could it be done?
For the first time Reuben fell to calculation over his money matters, which he did not ask Hannah to revise.