At the thought of it his soul would swell with venom, and he would make haste to hang up his hat and coat and the detested mittens, and slink upstairs to Julia and his notebooks.

The drawing-room at least was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man and the young girl; it was there that she made her dresses; it was there that he inked his spectacles over the registration of disconnected facts and the calculation of insignificant statistics.
Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine.

'If it were not for that,' he cried one afternoon, 'he would not care to keep me.

I might be a free man, Julia.

And I could so easily support myself by giving lectures.' 'To be sure you could,' said she; 'and I think it one of the meanest things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement.