And Now Good-bye by James Hilton — Read

He had slept poorly; his throat was bad again; and the bacon and eggs, due to renewed miscalculation or negligence on the part of Ellen, were almost uneatable. He did not grumble, partly because Mary grumbled so much, but chiefly because he had no appetite. "I suppose you'll be wanting your breakfast early tomorrow, Howat?" Aunt Viney said, but he replied: "Oh no, I'll make myself a cup of tea before I go--I can get a meal on the train. There's no need for you or Ellen to get up any earlier than usual." He disliked giving trouble, not wholly from unselfish motives--he disliked the trouble that giving trouble caused.

After breakfast he had hoped for an hour or so of quietness; as it chanced, however, several callers took up his time; a woman wanted a 'character' written out for her small boy, a Sunday school pupil; and an unemployed young fellow, a complete stranger, called to know if Howat could give him some job of painting or cleaning windows in the chapel. Howat couldn't, but the man's long story of tramping the country in search of work depressed him in a way which the narrator joyfully perceived; he amplified his tale till Howat was finally reduced to a condition of nodding melancholy. In the end a ten-shilling note, which Howat could ill afford, changed hands, and the man was sent to the kitchen to see if he could be given a meal. He got one, but Aunt Viney meanwhile put him through various tests of her own devising, with the result that, so she claimed afterwards to Mrs. Freemantle, she felt sure he was a fraud--"though, of course, you can never prove these things, and Howat had given him something, I'll dare be bound, as he always does unless I catch them first before they get inside the house."