Read it through once

When all was over, there came the inevitable day of reckoning, and Miss Mitford had to face an appalling list of debts accumulated by her father’s extravagance, liabilities amounting to close upon £1,000. The sum seems incredible in view of Miss Mitford’s earnings and of the help which had been periodically obtained from William Harness in addition to the State pension. How can such a condition of affairs be accounted for? A clue is, we think, to be found in a letter which Miss Mitford wrote to a friend some six months before her father died. “At eighty, my father is privileged to dislike being put out of his way in the smallest degree, as company always does, so that I make it as unfrequent as possible, and the things that weigh upon me are not an occasional bottle or two of port or claret or champagne, but the keeping two horses instead of one, the turning half a dozen people for months into the garden, which ought to be cultivated by one person, and even the building—as I see he is now meditating—a new carriage, when we have already two, but too expensive. These _are_ trials, when upon my sinking health and overburdened strength lies the task of providing for them;—when, in short, I have to provide for expenses over which I have no more control than my own dog, Flush.... It is too late now for the slightest hope of change; and his affection for me is so great, that to hint at the subject would not only shock him, but perhaps endanger his health.”