"It's no good, Lady Elizabeth. You'll have to wait like the rest of us. It's only a matter of a few minutes."

"Oh, do hurry up in front there!" Lady Elizabeth called back to him, laughing, but imperious. The pressure she and her party were making still continued, with the result that Deleah was driven roughly forward.

"Gently! Gently!" Sir Francis called again, and Deleah felt that his hands were on her shoulders and he was shielding her with his arms as much as possible from the crushing of the crowd.

A minute, and they were through the doorway into the spacious porch, where individual movement was possible, and the fresh night air blew, and Deleah could see the light from the big lamp over the archway flaring on the top of her shabby old fly, while behind it was a long line of handsome carriages whose drivers vituperated the driver of the cab, in his broken hat. At the window was Bessie's face. Bessie's excited voice was heard shrilly calling on Deleah's name.

"Deda! Deda! Where on earth have you got to?"

"Miss Days' carriage stops the way"—the cry which made one Miss Day long to hide her minished head in the earth—woke the echoes again.

Deleah half turned her head on its long neck, whispered a shy "thank you" to the tall gentleman at her back; and darted away.

"Oh here you are, Deleah! Come along," Reggie Forcus cried, appearing before her. "We thought we'd lost you. Take my arm."

But before Deleah could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell back involuntarily.

"Thank you. Miss Deleah is in my charge," a voice said; and Deleah felt herself dragged through the crowded porch, and over the pavement to the cab-door, on the arm of Mr. Charles Gibbon.

"You'll excuse me," he said, looking in upon the sisters through the cab window when the door was shut. "I hope you young ladies did not think I intruded. But your mother had asked me to keep an eye on you."

"And pray why didn't you come with Reggie?" Bessie demanded indignantly as the fly at last moved on.

Deleah laughed hysterically. "I was torn away from him," she said. "He all but knocked Reggie down, and seized upon me." She indicated the form of Mr. Gibbon, dimly seen, seated sentinel on the box beside the broken-hatted driver.

"Impertinence!" Bessie said. "We have to be civil to him at home, but when we are among other people I think he might leave us to our friends."

"Reggie Forcus hasn't been much of a friend."

"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always downstairs"—(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, but he" (again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is always there."

"Well, why not?"

"Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out of a draper's shop?"

"But he comes to call on people in a gro—"

"That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there, remember."

"Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Saturdays I am at home all day."

"I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions.



CHAPTER XIV

A Tea-Party In Bridge Street

His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and those hours he had been wont to pass with his friend William Day being still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons. The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's one blessed day was no longer hers, to be passed from morn to eve in the midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business worries.

She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation. But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers" and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers might be saved from starving.

So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat, beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street.

Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the passers-by beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration who passed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and their domestic economies.

"There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace shawl before."

"Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.

"Not she!" Here Emily would lean over the back of her mistress's chair and crane her neck to get a better view of the raiment in question. "Bran' new, I'll lay a guinea! And her still fifteen pound in your debt!"

"Here come the Briggses! Look out, m'm!" presently she would cry. "Well, and ain't they figged out! The whole four of the girls—and every one of 'em in a new bonnet! And them buyin' a pound-and-a-half of butter a week for the whole fam'ly! Tha's what I always say, m'm; the Briggses is a fam'ly that save out of their insides to put it on their bids. Now, here come the best-lookin' young ladies and young gentleman we have set eyes on yet." And then Mrs. Day's own daughters, with Franky clinging to Deleah's arm, would be seen to approach.

"We think so, don't we, Emily? It's because they're our own, you know," the mistress would say, with her deprecating smile. "It's because they're ours, that they seem to look so nice."

But in her heart she heartily agreed with Emily that hers was indeed a charming family.

In the evening Bessie would go off to church again, escorted by Emily, but Deleah would stay with her mother. They would sit together in peaceful, delicious idleness over the winter fire, or, it being summer, they would go forth, escaping by backways and narrow lanes of the old town from the crowded pavements to the quiet roads with their formal rows of trees, their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along, enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium, calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming lime-trees overhead.

When on that scented Sabbath peacefulness the warm dark would begin to descend, it sometimes happened that the boarder, Charles Gibbon, who also loved the scent of flower and of shrub, and enjoyed the soft air of evening upon his cheek, would meet or overtake Mrs. Day and her daughter as they sauntered homewards; and in a very friendly and pleasant way the three would finish their walk together.

But about the Sunday afternoons there was a less agreeable tale to tell. The young ladies retired with their books to their bedrooms, on those occasions; Franky took refuge with Emily in the kitchen, a store of oranges and nuts having been laid in by that faithful retainer for his entertainment there. The Manchester man saw more than enough of his employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone.

Then had her books to be produced, her order-sheet criticised; then was comparison made between this week's takings and those of the corresponding week last year. If, as too often happened, alas! the sales had been less, the poor apologetic tradeswoman had to suffer for it.

"You are losing custom. You must not lose it," the tradesman would bluster. Or "Your expenses are too much. You are eaten up with expenses," he would insist. "You don't see how you can reduce them? Do with less help, my good lady. What do people do who can't afford help? Go without it, and do the work themselves. It's what you must do. It is indeed, I do assure you. Cut down your expenses. Cut them down! Cut them down!"

"It is easier to say that than to do it," poor Mrs. Day would demur. "We have nothing superfluous."

"You will be surprised how much you can do without if you really make the effort. Get rid of your assistant in the shop. Get rid of your servant. A servant is a very pleasant possession, but if we can't afford to keep one, we can't. What is Miss Bessie doing all day long?"

"Bessie is useful in the house. Bessie is not strong," Bessie's mother would plead; and George Boult would snort the suggestion to scorn.

"A little extra work would be the best physic for Miss Bessie." She had put on a good stone of flesh since he had seen her last, he would declare. Work never killed half the women that idleness killed.

On a Sunday afternoon soon after that concert to which the girls had been escorted by the lodger, George Boult, his business exhortation finished, sprang on the poor mother the news that her son at the branch shop at Ingleby was not giving satisfaction.

A complaint of incivility to a customer had come to the ear of the local manager, who had reported to the Head at Brockenham, delivering himself of the opinion at the same time that the young man played billiards at the Rose and Crown more than was consistent with his means, or the devotion he should have shown to his employer's interests.

Lydia Day listened, her dark, handsome face of a lead white, while the man seated at the table opposite to her condemned her son utterly as one who was flinging away a fine chance. He, George Boult, had been thrown, at Bernard's age, on his own resources. Never that he could recall had a helping hand been held to him. (Men of the stamp of George Boult never recognise the helping hand.) Work had been his pleasure. Had he played billiards? Had he shown temper before a customer? No! Or thought of his own pleasure before his employer's advantage? Never!

Very eloquent he was on the strenuous period of his own youth, recounting the virtues he had displayed and the vices he had shunned, holding up his shining example before the dimmed eyes of the poor mother, listening with sick politeness, her heart so heavy in her breast. The excuses she made for her Bernard to herself she dared not put forward. The fact that he was his father's son; the contrast between the life he had known and that he was called on to live; his youth; his exile from home and home influences; his empty pockets; his tastes which had been formed when money seemed plentiful.

"I implore you to be patient with the boy," was about all she thought it wise to say; that and the promise she made to write at once to Bernard to beg of him to consider his circumstances and Mr. Boult's goodness, and to change what was amiss.

Bernard, her darling, handsome son! While she said it she saw him in a thousand pictures stored in her mother's heart. All that was desirable he had seemed to her; she had never thought of wishing him to change!

"Let him know he is on his trial," George Boult said.

"He is being carefully watched and reported on. Do not tell him this, but tell him the impression he has made on Adams" (Adams was the manager at Ingleby) "is not a satisfactory one; and Adams is a man whose opinions I hold very high. Tell him he is having the chance of his life; warn him not to abuse it."

He was still trampling the poor woman's heart beneath the prancings of his own eloquence, when the ringing of the street-door bell created a diversion.

Downstairs went Miss Bessie, her fair hair ruffled, her cheek flushed from its pressure upon her pillow, to take in, as she imagined, in the absence of Emily, the afternoon's milk.

It was not the anticipated milk, however, that Bessie found upon the doorstep, but no less a delightful surprise than the exquisite person of Mr. Reginald Forcus.

"Ah, how do, Bessie? I thought I'd give you a look. I hope I am not de trop?" he asked. He pronounced the last words as they are spelt, not because he did not know better, but because he liked to be amusing, and the mispronunciation of words was the kind of fun he appreciated.

With effusion, Bessie bade him enter; but in her mind were distracting thoughts of the condition of her chignon, and the present occupancy of the only sitting-room.

"There's some one upstairs with mama," she told him, anxiously smiling upon him, her grey-green eyes glinting with pleasure. "The Mr. Boult, you know, who helps her with her books and things when she'll let him. You won't mind?"

"Happy, I'm sure. You're all alone, week-days," he said as he mounted the stairs behind her—stairs very dark and very steep, starting from the almost unmitigated blackness of the hall upon which the front door opened. "I thought if I looked in on the Sunday afternoons I should find the others as well, perhaps."

"You'll find mama," Bessie said, wondering a little at his concern for the proprieties. "Here is Reggie, mama," she said. And Mrs. Day, her heart full of her own unhappy boy, went forward with a weary step, and smilelessly held out a welcoming hand.

"You are very kind to come, Reggie," she said. "This is our good friend, Mr. George Boult; Mr. Reginald Forcus."

"I take it young Mr. Forcus and I don't need any introduction," the draper said.

The Forcus family did not deal at his shop; the deference therefore which the draper never failed to pay his customers was not needed here. He shook poor Reggie's hand mercilessly, and inquired after Sir Francis. Mr. George Boult had recently been made a magistrate; Sir Francis and he sat on the same bench.

"You are extremely well known to me by sight," he went on, still exercising the visitor's hand. "I should say there are few people in Brockenham better known to me by sight."

"I go past your place pretty often," Reggie admitted.

"You'd see me four or five times a day if you were looking out."

"Oh, I'm not always behind my own shop window," Mr. Boult said, not too well pleased. When he was not talking to a customer why should he be reminded of the shop? Since he had been able to write J.P. after his name, he had more than once been secretly desirous of temporarily forgetting the successful drapery establishment.

He was always disposed to lose himself in wonder at his own marvellous achievements. Time was when the members of the great brewery firm were as far above his head as the stars of heaven above the pebbles of the street. Yet here he was now, to all intents and purposes on a par with them. Where was the difference? A successful business man, he was—what more were they? Still, since Sir Francis had taken to addressing him as "Boult" without any prefix to the name, when they met in the magisterial room, the desire to ingratiate himself with any member of the Forcus family was very warm within him.

"Whenever I do see you, I am struck with the handsomeness of the animal you ride, Mr. Forcus," he was saying presently. "I think this young gentleman rides the handsomest animal in the town, Miss Bessie. I'm a great admirer of handsome animals, Mr. Forcus."

"Is that so? Really?" said Reggie, supremely indifferent. He had no objection whatever to make the acquaintance of old Boult, the linen-draper—although, of course, that difference between a successful draper and a successful brewer which Mr. Boult was incapable of discerning was quite clear to him—but he was not in the least interested in him; and what should the old fellow know about a horse?

"Isn't Deleah at home to-day? I thought I should have caught Deleah. That is why I dropped in on the Sunday."

Deleah was out walking with Franky, Mrs. Day told him, thankful that Bessie, who had slipped away with a view to the adjustment of the disarranged chignon, was not present to hear that explanation.

"I meet Deleah sometimes as she comes home from school," the young man artlessly continued. "I dare say she's told you I sometimes meet her?"

No, Mrs. Day did not remember hearing Deleah mention that interesting fact.

"No harm in that, I suppose, Mrs. Day? You don't object, if Deleah doesn't?"

"Harm?" repeated Mrs. Day, only half conscious of what was said, thinking of Bernard going wretchedly about his hated work with a "sharp watch" set on his doings.

"I mean I wouldn't do anything to annoy you or Deleah—"

It was a relief that at that moment Bessie descended, her hair in order, a look of pleasant excitement on her plump face. No one need half-heartedly try to carry on a conversation with Reggie when once Bessie was present to monopolise him.

And then Deleah and Franky, their cheeks rosy from exercise, appeared. Franky went to his mother and climbed on her lap, and Deleah sat close to her side, a little too apparently, perhaps, leaving the young man and Bessie to carry on their sparkling conversation uninterrupted.

When Emily came in, to lay the tea-table, the two men got up to go. "Mama, Reggie will stay if you ask him," Bessie said. How triumphant she felt, how her eyes sparkled when Reggie said at once he should like to—rather!

"And Mr. Boult will stay to tea too, mama," Deleah said quickly. She did not need the heavy silence which fell to tell she had offended; not Bessie's warning scowl, nor her mother's piteous look of appeal. As no one seconded the invitation, "Do stay," Deleah said. And he gracefully yielded.

"Since you are so polite, I don't mind if I do," he said. He really felt honoured by the invitation, the first he had ever received in that house. The long low-ceilinged sitting-room above the grocer's shop was tenanted by ladies of whom in days gone by he had felt a certain awe. Down in the world as they were now, he never forgot that ancient attitude of theirs. Even when he bullied Mrs. Day, and advised her daughters to do the work of servants, he had not forgotten. Perhaps at such times he remembered it more than ever.

His wife, dead for the last seven years, had been of a different make from these women. Finding nothing in himself to debar him from being an ornament in any society, he saw very well that the late Mrs. George Boult had been, as he put it, "of another kidney." He had been fairly content with her while he had her; she had been a good housekeeper; and had not crossed him in his wish to save money; but looking back upon the poor woman, he saw plainly that she had not the appearance of these ladies, nor had she spoken like them, nor possessed the ways of them. She had been all very well for his then condition, but times had changed for him; and here he was, well pleased to be sitting at the board of people who would not at one time have received the late Mrs. Boult under their roof, on terms of equality with Sir Francis Forcus's brother!

He was a rich man himself, and going, he would see to it, to be richer, but the income of the Forcuses he knew was perhaps seven times as much as his own; and he was one of that large body of good sort of people who love to be in the society of men richer than themselves.

"We so much enjoyed the concert, Mr. Boult," Deleah said to him.

"The concert?" Mr. Boult repeated. He wished to talk to Bessie, having it on his conscience to advise her to do without a servant, and he did not feel called upon to exert himself "to do the polite," as he phrased it, to the younger girl.

"Some kind friend sent us stalls for the concert," explained Deleah, flushing. "It was so kind of the unknown person, and such a delightful treat."

"Stalls? The half-guinea places, do you mean?" There was astonished disapproval in eyes and voice.

"Wasn't it sweet of Someone?" Deleah went on, bent on expressing her gratitude to the shy donor. "It was the same Someone, I suppose, who sent the lilies-of-the-valley, yesterday, and my darling canary; look! It is Someone to whom we can never be grateful enough!"

"Better keep your gratitude for the more substantial benefits you have all received." He was thinking, Mrs. Day knew, of the fifty pounds which had headed the subscription-list. "Lilies were sixpence the bunch in the market yesterday."

"But it isn't the cost," Deleah explained; her face was rose-red with her effort to say that which she had determined should be said to the man they all disliked, but who was showing himself by the thoughtful little attentions to which she alluded, in his true colours. "It isn't the cost alone, it is the kind thought for which we are so grateful."

"Oh, come, Deleah!" Reggie interrupted. "I offered you tickets, you remember, and you weren't a bit grateful for the kind thought. And as for the lilies, I dare say I could send you flowers every morning from the conservatories at home, if you'd care for them."

"I should not in the least care for them from your conservatories. Don't send them, Reggie, or we should have to send them back."

"Why, pray? Speak for yourself, please," Bessie cried. "If you've any flowers going begging I'm not above taking them, Reggie, remember."

"The flowers aren't mine," Reggie reminded her at once. "They grow there—tons of them—and no one to look at them now, but Francis and Ada. Yet, if I want to send a few to a girl there's questions asked, and a sickening fuss made. I order them from the nurseryman rather than have the fag of it."

"Well—?"

"Oh, all right. I'll order some for you, Bessie."

Then, when tea was all but finished, a step was heard upon the stairs, and presently Mr. Gibbon came in. At the sight of the other two men his face fell perceptibly. To him also the Sabbath was a precious time. The hour, especially, which brought the meal over which they need not hurry for any evening work; in the room made sweet with flowers; in the company of the three charming ladies; on the table the extra delicacies Emily always provided for the occasion.

Boult! Forcus! The two men whom, least on earth, he desired to see there.

"Hallo, Gibbon!" his chief said; and the man addressed felt in his bones that the tone was unmistakably that of the employer to the employed. "Been getting forward for to-morrow, I suppose?"

No, Gibbon said, he had not; and he spoke curtly, and kept his heavy head up, and drew his brows together, and was somewhat offensive in manner, in the effort to show he was not subservient. He bowed sulkily to Mr. Reginald Forcus, when Mrs. Day murmured that gentleman's name. The fact that the young man when he came of an age to take the third share which was to be his in the brewery would be rolling in money, was nothing to him, and he wished to show to all present it was not! At the concert he, who was ugly, and short, and poor, and of no account in the world, had had the best of the elegant young man with his fortune and the name which was one to conjure with in Brockenham. He had wrested Deleah from him, and pushed him on one side. He did not propose to smile amiably at him across the tea-table after that.

He was going to Lancashire to buy goods for his department to-morrow—he was absent there for four or five days every three weeks. This was his last evening of Paradise for a while; and the Serpent had entered there!

"You are late," Bessie rebuked him sweetly. "And you must wait for more tea to be made. Where have you been, pray? Give an account of yourself."

He had walked out five miles, he told her, to the garden of a friend who had a small conservatory. He had hoped to be rewarded with some flowers to return with, but had only been accorded the three roses he held in his hand.

"Very sweet of you to bring them for me, all the same," Bessie said, smiling graciously.

Gibbon was, however, shy or sullen this evening, for he seemed by no means anxious to relinquish the flowers; and when he did so he laid them between his plate and Deleah's, who promptly put them into Bessie's extended hand. When pinned in the bosom of her grey frock the flowers had a charming effect, to which she called the attention of all present.

"Aren't they sweet, mama! Mr. Boult, Reggie, aren't they simply sweet! And poor Mr. Gibbon to have walked so many miles for them!"

And so, at cross purposes, with heart-burnings and some bitterness of spirit, they got through their Sunday tea.

"It would have been delightful if you had not invited your old Scrooge," Bessie, who, at any rate, had thoroughly enjoyed herself, flung at her sister.



CHAPTER XV

The Manchester Man

Mrs. Day had retired to write her letter to Bernard in the privacy of her own room, and Bessie, in radiant spirits, had gone off to dress for evening service, where she was to go escorted by Franky and Emily. Deleah was left in charge of the boarder.

It was a point of honour with them all that the young man should have his money's worth while under their roof, and above all, should have his meals in comfort. The cup which Bessie had poured out for him stood cold and untasted by his side. Deleah took it from him. Certainly he should not have the dregs of the tea-pot; she would brew a fresh pot for him.

"I beg you will not trouble, Miss Deleah. It is my fault in being late."

He, who held the creed that a gentleman must never allow a lady to wait on him (unless she was his mother, or he was married to her), must follow Miss Deleah to the kitchen, also on the upper floor, must watch her rinse the tea-pot, must advise with her as to the amount of tea required to make the three large cups he always drank, must himself pour the boiling water, she, with many exhortations from him to be very careful lest she scalded her fingers, holding the tea-pot. There was something delightfully homelike and familiar in this sharing of simple duties.

Deleah, returned to the sitting-room where she sat to fill his cup and to cut him bread-and-butter, was as lovely a vision as any man could desire to see at his board. Pleasantly and gaily she chattered, waiting on him with her dainty hands. He, tongue-tied, answering little, embarrassed and ill at ease in that sweet society.

For a year and a half he had lived in the dingy house above the shop in Bridge Street. He had for eighteen months enjoyed that propinquity, that familiar intercourse, which is all that is necessary to make many an ugly woman beautiful in the eyes of the man in enjoyment of her society. It is small wonder then, if the poor Manchester man exaggerated in his own mind those unusual charms which Deleah incontestably possessed.

A year and a half! And in all that time he could never recall an occasion when he had been left for any length of time alone with Deleah, before. It was Bessie who had constituted herself his especial friend, had seized on him, talked to him, made confidences to him, and satisfied herself it was his wish to talk to her. Deleah, he knew, had looked on him as Bessie's property. He had resented this assumption, but had not known how to dispute it.

Besides being of a loveliness which he had come to think unsurpassed, she was so gentle, so tender-hearted, so pitiful, this young Deleah; so adorably kind. She had learnt in that grief and shame which he knew had befallen her a lesson, taught her he was sure by the pitying angels of God; to think no sorrow too trivial to be despised, to be tender even to the scratched finger, the bruised shins of the poor men and women scrambling painfully along the tough and thorny path of life.

He was a short and broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; and with his soul he worshipped the soul of Deleah.

"I am sorry," he suddenly said, cutting across some little triviality of hers with which she was striving to cover his silence—"sorry you did not have even one of the roses I walked ten miles to get for you."

"I?" she glanced fleetingly at him. "Oh, it does not matter, of course. Bessie has them, and she loves them so. I had far rather Bessie had them."

He gazed upon her, reproachful but silent.

"Bessie so loves flowers," she said, remembering how Bessie had pounced upon the poor roses before they had been offered. It had not been a pretty sight—but Bessie—poor Bessie!—did such things.

"Miss Bessie so loves them to wear in her dress," he corrected.

And at that moment Miss Bessie burst into the room, attired for conquest and for church, the flowers which the boarder had walked so far to procure, pinned, as was the mode of the day, beneath the collar of her jacket. Gibbon glanced grudgingly at them, nestling becomingly enough under Bessie's plump chin.

"Oh, how glum you look!" cried Bessie in the best of spirits.

"Not glum at all," said Mr. Gibbon with something less than his usual politeness of tone.

"Only cross? Ah! I am so afraid of you! I must run away."

She beckoned to Deleah, who followed her to the tiny landing. "The Honourable Charles has got his back up because of Reggie," she whispered, "and Reggie is furious because of the Honourable Charles's flowers. Did you hear how he snapped at me just now?"

"Why should Mr. Gibbon be angry because of Reggie?"

"Oh, my dear innocent babe! Don't you know that men are sometimes jealous?"

"Yes. I know it. And I know another thing: and that is you were doing your best to make them jealous."

Bessie laughed delightedly as at a compliment: "I leave one of them to you. Try to get him into a better frame of mind before I come back," she said, and turned to run downstairs.

Deleah leaned over the railing of the tiny landing, lit by a single gas-jet above her head, to watch her go. She liked to see Bessie good-tempered and in good spirits, and if to believe that every man she knew was in love with her made her so, Deleah was willing to humour her. About the devotion of young Forcus for Bessie she had her doubts, but that of the lodger she took as a matter of course.

He was still seated at the table when she returned to him; the bread-and-butter she had cut for him untouched on his plate, his tea untasted.

"I thought perhaps you were not coming back," he said. He sighed, as if relieved from an anxiety which had been painful. "Miss Deleah, I wish very much to speak to you."

There were a few things in the matter of deportment he had learnt since living over the grocer's shop; one was that a man must not sit while a lady is standing. So he stood up in his place now, and waited till she had taken hers again behind the tea-urn.

"Oh, but, Mr. Gibbon, do eat your tea!"

He pushed his plate away: "I don't want to eat. I want to talk to you."

Glancing at him she saw that his face, ordinarily of a deep-diffused red, was as pale as it is possible for such a face to become. Often when she had felt his eyes upon her and had looked up frankly to meet them, she had noticed how quickly he had averted them, almost as if detected in a crime. Now she found them fixed upon her face.

"There is something I have made up my mind to tell you," he said.

"It won't take long, I hope? Because as Emily is at church I have to clear the tea-things."

She jumped up at once and began to do so. "He is going to tell me about Bessie," she said to herself. She did not particularly desire his confidence, and with a little more clatter and fussiness than was necessary to the task, she put the cups and plates on the tray.

In a preoccupied manner he helped her to do this, took the tray from her, when it was laden, to the kitchen, while she carried the eatables. Coming back, together they folded the tablecloth. A pleasant enough occupation to be shared with a pretty girl; but it was evident, although his trade had made his blunt fingers deft at the handling of material, and he was carefully observant of the practice which must be followed in the art, that he was thinking of other things than maintaining the creases in the tablecloth.

"There!" said Deleah, as an announcement that their light labours were finished. She had put the cloth away in the press, and turned to find the Honourable Charles, as she and Bessie to themselves always called their boarder, standing with his back to the little dresser at which Emily made her pastry, his arms crossed upon his chest.

"Now you can go and sit down in comfort, and smoke the pipe of peace on my special window-seat—I give you permission—and watch the good people going to church."

"That is, if you are coming."

"I think I'll go first and see what has become of mama."

"This will do, for a few minutes, Miss Deleah. We will stop here," he said.

So Deleah, there being no escape, perched herself on the corner of the table where the plates and tea-cups were collected until Emily should return to wash them, and waited for what he had to say.

He found some difficulty in beginning apparently, and frowned upon the matting covering the floor.

"It's about myself," at length he began with an effort painful to see; his hands seemed to be pulling tensely upon his folded arms, the blunt fingers of the broad red hands showed white upon the coat-sleeves, his face was still of the muddy pink which with him stood for pallor.

"I hope you won't think it intruding of me to talk about myself."

"Which in other words means about Bessie," said Deleah to herself, strung up, now that it was inevitable, for the revelation.

"It's about my prospects. Perhaps you think I haven't got any, Miss Deleah. Or any position, to speak of? I have not, I know. Not like your friend, Mr. Forcus. He's got this thousands a year, where at most I can hope for hundreds, I suppose."

Deleah divined the sore feeling in his mind and hastened to bring the balm: "Reggie Forcus might have millions where he will have thousands—and the more he had the less likely would he be to affect any of us. He has been here this afternoon, and if he remembers he may come again. But that is simply the whim of an idle young man who at the moment can think of nothing more amusing to do."

"I thought he seemed to take a good deal of interest. I caught him looking—"

"At Bessie? He likes her, of course, and there was once a great friendship. If—things—hadn't happened, I dare say it might have come to more than friendship. But they did happen, and—" She broke off. Never could she without suffering and difficulty allude to the tragedy which had cost them so dear.

"I assure you, Mr. Gibbon," she began again, and smiled encouragingly upon him, "you are of far more importance to us than Mr. Reginald Forcus is ever likely to be."

"I thank you for telling me that," he said, and his fingers strained tighter upon his coat-sleeves.

Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her as she sat, perched with ease and grace among the tea-cups on the kitchen table. Every movement of hers was made, every posture taken, with ease and grace. It happened, for Deleah's fortune, to be the day of the small woman; the day when she of inches was pronounced a gawk, and she of five feet and a little—slim of waist, of foot, of hand, of ankle—slid with ease and naturalness into a man's heart.

"Thank you for that," said the Manchester man again, with a kind of hoarse fervour in his voice. "You are always kind. I don't think the angels in heaven are kinder than you."

A statement at which Deleah among the tea-cups laughed light-heartedly.

"No. Don't laugh," he said almost fiercely. "It is true! I believe it with all my soul."

He looked from her to the floor at his feet again, frowning upon it, striving for the calmness to proceed with that which he had to say in the order he had taught himself to believe was best for his case.

"I'm getting two hundred a year," he said. "This year, come Christmas, I'm to have a rise to two hundred and fifty. Next year"—he paused, set his lips tightly—"next year I mean to ask for a share in the business."

"Do you?" said Deleah with polite interest. "Do you really think you will get it, Mr. Gibbon?"

"I shall get it, fast enough. I shall get it, for this reason: if Boult doesn't give it me I shall leave him. Boult can't afford to lose me. I don't want to boast, but it's true. He can't afford to lose me, and he knows it. Do you know," and he lifted his head, speaking more naturally and looking at her with pride in his achievement, "in the two years I have been in the concern I have doubled the takings in my department?"

"Really? How very clever of you, Mr. Gibbon! You must be pleased!"

He looked at her, and laughed hopelessly. "You don't understand these things, Miss Deleah. You don't realise that what I have done means much."

"Oh, but I do, Mr. Gibbon! I have always thought that you must be a quite wonderful business man; so quiet, so regular, thinking of nothing but your work."

"I do think of other things," he said fervidly. "I want to get on. I want to improve myself, and my position. There's an end I'm working for. If a man sets an end before him, and works for all he's worth to get it, does he get it, Miss Deleah?"

"He gets it. Never doubt it!"

"Well then, see! When I get my share of the business I shall work the whole show up as I have worked my own department. The other establishments in the same line can put their shutters up. It's the biggest drapery business in the town now—Boult is proud enough to ram that fact down your throat—but I shall make it the biggest drapery business in the Eastern Counties."

"How splendid of you, Mr. Gibbon! And supposing Mr. Boult won't give you the share?"

"I am not sure it would not be better. In that case I shall start on my own. Not in a shop. I shall open a warehouse for the sale of my goods, alone."

"Those calicoes, and prints, and 'drabbets,' you go to Manchester to buy?" put in Deleah, anxious to show that she understood.

"Manchester goods. I shall carry with me all the little customers who come to me now to take my advice what they shall buy, and a lot of shopkeepers of a better class, who will deal with a wholesale mean but will not buy their goods of Boult."

"Poor Mr. Boult!"

"He must look after hisself. I heard Miss Bessie say the other day that the wholesale line was genteeler than retail—." He broke off and looked questioningly at Deleah, who had formed no opinion on the subject.

"Bessie knows about these things," she assured him. "Then, you will become a very rich man, Mr. Gibbon. And will go away, and never help us to make mincemeat any more, or to clear the table after Sunday tea. You will drive your carriage with a pair of horses—not one miserable screw like Mr. Boult—and you will live in a fine house, and grow roses, and build conservatories; won't you?"

"Yes," he assented solemnly. Then he unfolded his arms and' stretching them sideways gripped with each hand the ledge of the dresser against which he leant. "I shall want you to come with me," he said.

"Me!" said Deleah. The shock of the surprise made her for a moment breathless. She sat and gazed at him with wide eyes for what seemed an age, saying nothing; and he also, for the moment incapable of further speech, gazed back. At last "Bessie?" Deleah got out. "You mean Bessie?"

"Why should I mean Bessie? Bessie!" he said, and flung the thought of her from him with scorn. "Why should I mean Bessie? I mean you—you—you!" he said, and endured her silence with eyes that clung desperately to her face.

"When I leave here, to go into that fine house—with the carriage and—conservatories—will you come too?"

"Oh, no!" Deleah said, whispering, with drooping head.

Then they sat opposite each other on table and dresser and were silent, while the blood sang loudly in Deleah's ears, and beat with such cruel throbbing in the man's temples that he did not know how to endure the agony, and thought that his head must burst.

When Deleah at last lifted her eyes and looked at him the change in his face frightened her, his breath came hard and noisily as if he had been running. Was it possible he could feel like that—this quiet, inoffensive, uninteresting, middle-aged boarder, who had never appeared to feel anything particularly before? About her?

"I am so sorry," she said in genuine distress, horribly grieved at and ashamed of her part in his pain. "I thought it was Bessie."

"You have refused me? You mean it—absolutely? There is no hope for me?"

Deleah shivered. It was the regulation phrase used by the rejected lover in the novel of the day. It had thrilled Deleah a hundred times as she had read it. There was nothing stilted or theatrical in the words as Charles Gibbon said them, but they brought home to her the unwelcome fact that he was in deadly earnest, that he loved her, and she was dealing him a cruel blow. She felt miserable, humiliated, ashamed. It was preposterous, out of all proportion, that he should have had to ask such a question, in such a tone, of little Deleah Day.

"I am so very sorry, Mr. Gibbon," she said again, and he heard in a silence that made her heart ache.

"Shall you go away?" she asked him presently. In books the lover being rejected removed himself for a time in order to recover from the blow. She was relieved to find in the boarder's case this was not considered necessary.

"Why should I go away?" he asked.

"It will be better to go on just the same," she advised eagerly. "Bessie need never know."

"Bessie!" he said again contemptuously; he loosed his grip of the dresser, and swung round, standing with his back to her, that she might not see his face. "You've crushed every hope I had; you've—broken me; and you talk to me of Bessie. What, in the name of heaven or hell, do you suppose I care for Bessie; or whether she knows or not?"

Deleah, keeping her place on the table, listened to the altered, choked voice of him with astonishment. Their unfailingly polite—too polite! and retiring boarder! Was it really he, standing with his back to her, speaking of Bessie—Bessie!—in such a tone!

"You see, I never knew! I never guessed," she excused herself helplessly.

"No. I don't suppose you gave me a thought. Morning, noon and night you were everything to me. There was nothing else. I have worked for you, lived for you—"

His back was towards her—the horrible thought that he was crying came to her; his voice was rough and broken.

"If I had only guessed—" she said in hideous distress and embarrassment. She had thought, as all girls do, of one day getting an offer of marriage; that it could ever be such a miserable experience as this she had not imagined. If it had only been a stranger, she thought foolishly; some one outside her life, of whom she had seen little! But Mr. Gibbon—their boarder! The sight of him in their home circle had become as familiar to her as might have been the sight of her brother: she could not reconcile herself to the thought that this man in the horribly unfamiliar guise was he. "If I had only guessed—!"

"And if you had?" he asked, but hopelessly, without turning round.

"I could have told you the sooner. There wouldn't have been such a—waste."

She slipped off the table, and stood beside it in a painful state of indecision. She longed to get away from the sight of him, to escape; but at the same time, being Deleah, she also longed to comfort.

"I shall not even tell mama," she promised. "We shall go on just as usual. And soon—soon we shall forget it has happened."

"Shall we?"

"Oh, yes! It is astonishing how we can put things away, in the back of our minds, and go on as if they weren't there at all. Quite astonishing."

"We oughtn't to make a piece of work about our sorrows if we can get along with them as easily as that!"

"Oh, not our sorrows, of course." She remembered how the sorrow of her father's dreadful end was with her still and would be while she lived. "Our sorrow, of course, Mr. Gibbon, we cannot forget. But a little thing that goes amiss like this—a little disappointment—"

"I see," he said. Then he gave a sound, half choke, half hiccough, that was meant for a laugh; and presently he turned round. "Then, we will go on as before, Miss Deleah. You need not be afraid any one will learn of this—'little disappointment'—from me. I am pretty well used to hiding what I feel. It comes easy when you've once learnt that nobody cares."

"Oh, Mr. Gibbon. Don't please say that. I care."

"No, you don't. You don't care like I want you to. What's the good of anything else? Have we finished clearing away the tea-things, Miss Deleah? Anything more that I can help you with?"

She shook her head, looking at him with eyes which implored him not to be bitter or unhappy. And as she looked, seeing the familiar red face and squat strong figure of him in a new light an idea struck her.

"Mr. Gibbon," she said, "it was you who sent the concert tickets, and all the flowers and fruit, and the canary in its lovely cage. It was you—you!"

"No, no! Mr. Boult, of course, Miss Deleah. You found out who it was, long ago. Kind, generous Mr. Boult!"

"And I took them all, and never thanked you—!" She put out a hand to delay him as he walked past her to the door; but he took no heed, and without another word she let him go.

"What have you done with your roses?" Deleah asked. Bessie tucked in her plump chin and looked down upon the place beneath her jacket collar where they had been pinned. "I must have lost them coming out of church!" she said. "Pray do not let the Honourable Charles hear of it."

The three poor roses! Deleah's roses, the boarder had tramped the ten miles to get for her!



CHAPTER XVI

For Bernard

Sir Francis Forcus was standing with his back to the empty fireplace in his private room at the Brewery, a copy of the local daily newspaper in his hand. It was a pleasant room, although the view from the two open windows was only of the tall black wharves and warehouses across the way. You must lean from the window to catch sight of the black river flowing beneath, upon which the Brewery was built; of the great wherries and barges unloading below; to see the canoes and pleasure boats, escaping from the polluted waters, the bricks and mortars of the locality, to the sunlit stream flowing between fair gardens and green pastures of the country, a half-mile farther on.

From a window in one of the black, ill-looking wharves across the way an imprisoned lark was singing, rewarding man for his cruel treatment with the best he had to give, after the manner of the brute creation, whose avenging is not yet. A ray of sunlight straggling in—in more open, more favoured localities, the sun lay broadly over all on that spring morning—touched the face of Sir Francis, which wore a by no means well-pleased expression. In the paper he was reading, wet from the press, was an account of a steeplechase in which his brother's name had largely figured. He had not won the race, nor distinguished himself in any way, except by the number and severity of his falls, and the fact that he had killed his horse; but the Brockenham Star was, to a large extent, the property of the firm of big brewers, and had therefore made the most of the young man's exploits.

"The boy will break his neck yet," the reader said to himself. He was not largely in his brother's confidence. The death of the horse was news to him; he had not even known there was a steeplechase.

"What good is he doing with all this?" Sir Francis asked of himself, sternly looking off the paper. "He takes no interest in the Brewery. He is a man in years, and has never done a half-hour's work in his life."

Sir Francis's own half-hours of work would not have totalled up to much, but he had business ability, nevertheless. At certain hours of the day he was always to be found, as now, at his post, and what he did not do himself he took care that those he paid should do efficiently.

Above the mantelpiece hung the portrait of the founder of the Brewery, or rather of the man who had worked up the business already founded into a phenomenally successful one. Often as the elder partner looked upon the sensible, kindly, handsome-featured face, he reminded himself how very dear to his father in his old age had been this unbusiness-like, pleasure-loving, steeplechase-riding younger son, who had been but a boy at school when the old man had died. Very frequently it was necessary for him to remind himself of the fact; for between the duty-loving, serious-minded, middle-aged, sorrowing widower and his half-brother was very little in common.

A clerk opening the door announced that a lady had called who was waiting to see Sir Francis.

"A lady? My sister—Miss Forcus?"

"A young lady. She didn't give her name."

"Ask it, please."

Back came the clerk with a slip of paper on which was written a name Sir Francis read to himself, and then aloud, looking questioningly upon the clerk, "Miss Deleah Day. Miss Deleah Day?"

The clerk, having no information to give or suggestion to offer, continued to look respectfully at his employer's boots.

"Show her in, please," Sir Francis said; and in a minute the door was opened and Deleah appeared.

Sir Francis, the Brockenham Star depending from his left hand, bowed in his solemn fashion to the girl, and going forward turned a chair round from the writing-table, in which be indicated his desire that she should sit. How white and frightened she looked; what a young, little, extraordinary pretty thing! Full well he remembered the last occasion of her presence in his room. What had sent her to him now? What did she want? He recalled how Reggie, whose name, it seemed to him, was always being mentioned in some undesirable connection or other, had got himself mixed up with this girl's objectionable family. Reggie, he wondered? Or was it that the mother's wretched grocery business had failed, as he had always expected it to do, and he was to be asked for another contribution towards setting her going again?

With those thoughts passing through his mind, he went back to his old position by the fireplace, standing up stiff and straight and tall, upon the hearth, to survey his visitor from there.

"You were so kind once," Deleah said, and he heard that she had a difficulty in keeping her voice steady, and saw that her lips shook "—so very kind when I came to you before, that I have come again."

Too apprehensive of what her errand might be to say that he was glad to see her, he bowed his head in sign of courteous attention, and waited.

As she had come on her hateful errand, she had thought of how she would prepare the ground, in some way leading up to the petition she had to make, but speech was too difficult, and she could barely deliver herself of the necessary words: "I have come to ask you to give me fifty pounds," she said.

Sir Francis's eyes opened largely upon her, but he did not speak. To say at once that he would give the poor child—the tool no doubt of her family, sent by them to work upon him because she was so pretty and young and appealing—fifty pounds without further explanation would be simply silly: to say that he would not did not enter his head.

She had waited for an encouraging word; none coming; painfully she laboured on: "I say 'give' because I am not sure I could ever pay you—I earn so very little money. But if I ever can pay you, you may trust me that I shall."

"I am sure you will," the rich man said, and waited for her to go on with her story. But she sat in an embarrassed silence before him, her head drooping, frightened and ashamed.

"We will call it 'lent,' shall we?" presently he said. "You will feel happier so. And there will be no hurry. No hurry, at all."

"Oh thank you! I do thank you so much. I want to tell you—"

"No, no," he said and held up a hand to check the words upon her lips. It was ridiculous to give away money in such a fashion, but he had a feeling that if he knew its destination he should give it with more reluctance.

"But I must tell you, please. I wanted to tell you before, but—" Her eyes avoided his face and wandered distressedly round the room. How well she remembered it! It was here she had come to beg this man—this stranger!—to keep her father out of prison. And now her brother—now Bernard! Was there any girl in all the world so overwhelmed with shame as she! "It is my brother—" she got out. "He—I have brought his letter."

She found her pocket, and brought forth the letter which had come to her by the morning post, ravaging her heart, turning the sunshine black, making the song of the imprisoned lark opposite into a dirge, plunging her back into the woe which had been hers at the time of her father's disgrace. She drew the miserable letter from its envelope and held it to Sir Francis in trembling fingers.

"No," he said, and waved it away. "It is perhaps something that your brother would rather not have known. Something which can remain between you and him. And this—this fifty pounds"—he had gone to his writing-table, pulled a cheque-book from a drawer, was writing within it as he spoke—"this also is between you and me. No one, besides, needs ever to know a word of it."

The chair he had arranged for her to sit in was by the writing-table; he, sitting on the opposite side of it, lifted his eyes to her face without lifting his head: "You wish this made out to your brother or yourself?"

"To my brother."

"Will you tell me his name?"

"Bernard William."

She watched his strong white hand move over the paper, writing so easily the words that were of such moment to her. How the great ruby in the ring he wore on the hand which held the pen seemed to glow and burn in the sunlight. On the little finger of his other hand was a plain small circlet she knew to be from the finger of his dead wife. She noticed in the strong light from the window how the smooth black hair had grown grey about the ears, how lines which had not been there before had graved themselves in the handsome, impassive face. Was he very unhappy too, Deleah wondered, in the midst of her own trouble? Did he still mourn, as they said he had done, so heavily, for the lost wife?

He pushed the cheque across the table to her. "There!" he said.

He had caught her gaze fixed with its sorrowful questioning upon his face, and he put away from him his doubt, his annoyance, and in spite of himself smiled encouragement into her pleading, beautiful, innocently worshipping eyes.

"Do not be unhappy," he said. "This will put things right, we will hope; and set your brother on his feet again. You must not look so sad."

At the words—he had been wrong to speak so kindly—the clear hazel of her eyes was suffused with tears. The eyes were doubly beautiful so.

"'I'll not believe but Desdemona's honest'" he found himself replying to that annoying little voice which kept whispering, "Have they put her on to me?"

Deleah kept her wet eyes strained upon him, lest in lowering them the tears should overflow. "I don't know what you can think of me," she said falteringly. "I don't know how I had courage to come. I only had Bernard's letter this morning; he said—it—must be done to-day. My mother must not know: there is no one else: I had no one to ask. You had been so good to me once—I thought of you."

"I quite understand. Quite. Quite."

"I was a child then," she laboured on, forcing herself to try to express what she felt ought to be said; "and although I had no right to trouble you, to a child things may be forgiven. But now—but now—!"

"But now," he repeated, and smiled his faint smile again. To him she was but a child still, and his tone conveyed that message.

"I am very much ashamed," she said. "And so—so grateful."

She folded the cheque, put it in her cheap, little-used purse, and stood up. So humiliated she felt, she hesitated to put out her hand, lest he should think it presumptuous on her part to expect him to shake hands with her.

"Where is this brother of yours? What is he doing?" he asked.

"He is at Ingleby. Mr. George Boult put him into one of his shops in the country."

"Oh! George Boult?"

Something in tone depreciatory of the man caused Deleah to say quickly, "He has been very good to us. He helped mama about the grocer's shop; and advises her."

"So I have heard." He was thinking to himself if the unsatisfactory brother had to look for mercy for any misdoings to George Boult he would be in a sorry case.

"He is very young—my poor brother," Deleah put in. "And I suppose he has made bad friends. He never has a holiday. He can never come home to mama and us—"

"Ah, that is bad. And can't you go over to him? I am sure that you could do him good." For the thought came to him, as he looked down upon the sorrowful girl in her neat, cheap frock, standing so shyly before him, that he had never seen goodness written so legibly on the face of any human being as on that of this daughter of a thief and sister of a never-do-well.

"Railway travelling is expensive, and we are obliged to live very carefully," Deleah said. "Poor mama has made one or two bad debts lately. And so many people, who pay in the end, are so very slow to do so." Deleah shook her head slowly and sorrowfully over these sluggards. "Also, I am occupied, of course, all day long."

"May I know in what way?"

"I teach," Deleah said, and lifted her head with a kind of pride in the avowal which was very pretty. "I am second English governess at Miss Chaplin's school for young ladies. I earn enough there to buy my own clothes and Franky's."

Her courage was coming back to her; instead of the difficulty she had experienced in dragging out the words necessary to explain and condone her errand, she now had the impulse to tell him things, to make him confidences.

"And who is Franky?"

"He is my little brother. Very much younger than the rest, and the pet with all of us. Mama says, but for Franky, she thinks she could never have survived the troubles she has had. I think we all felt that. We could not be always crying and melancholy in the company of a little boy who does not understand, and who wants so much to enjoy himself. For Franky's sake we have to be cheerful. He is only nine. Only seven when—all that—happened to papa."

"Franky must not go into one of George Boult's shops," Sir Francis said. "When Franky is old enough to leave school—to begin to earn his living—come and tell me, will you?"

Her face lit, till it was lovely as a sun-kissed flower. "Oh, I will! Oh, thank you," she said; and then she did put out her hand, and for an instant her fingers closed with all their soft strength round the hand he gave her. "Oh, thank you!" she said again.

Then he opened the door for her, and she went.



Deleah, when she had sent off the cheque, whose receipt must have surprised him exceedingly, to her brother, felt herself to be almost bursting with the desire to confide in some one the history of her visit to the rich brewer. She longed to descant on his looks, to repeat his words, above all to tell of the heavenly promise contained in that last divine sentence concerning Franky. No one must be told; but Deleah was over young to be burdened with a secret; it made her restless. She could not sit with Bessie, to hear her discuss the pattern of the sleeve she was cutting out for a new Sunday frock. She ran down to the shop, for the relief of being near her mother.

Mrs. Day glanced at her with welcoming eyes and turned at once again attentively upon her customer, a good lady difficult to please in the matter of candles.

"A tallow candle will do very well for the servants to gutter down, in the kitchen," she was irritably declaring. "But neither my daughter nor me can abide the smell of tallow; and your wax ones are a cruel price. Cruel, Mrs. Day! I suppose you could not make a reduction by my taking two packets?"

Mrs. Day shook a patient head. "We really get almost nothing out of them, as it is," she sadly protested. "These candles—called composite—ladies are beginning to buy them for servants' use as well as their own. I sell more composites now than either wax or tallow."

"You couldn't oblige me with one or two to try?—Oh, good afternoon, Miss Day. So you are not above coming into the shop sometimes, to bear your mama company?"

"Above it!" said Deleah; and because she had to be as sweet as sugar to her mother's customers, she smiled upon Mrs. Potter, who turned from the counter to engage her in talk.

"What for you, my dear?" Mrs. Day's next customer was a very shabby, very small boy, his grimy, eager face appearing just above the counter.

"A ha'p'r' o' acids, like th' last." He held up the coin in his fist to assure her of the good faith of the transaction.

"You give me more 'n that, last time, for a ha'p'ny. You ha'n't weighed 'em," the customer grumbled.

"Lucky for you I have not! Here! Take your ha'penny and be off."

Many customers of that unremunerative order had the widow. When the ragged little ones happened to be about the age of Franky they were sure of bouncing weight, and of getting their money returned. She smiled upon the scaramouch now, who was watched from the door by half a dozen confederates. The ha'penny was common property apparently, for each was presently clamouring for his share.

These screws of sweets and quarter pounds of broken biscuits given to the children of the very poor afforded her the only pleasure Mrs. Day got out of her long hours behind the grocery counter. For, in spite of the greed and selfishness of human nature, perhaps the most keenly felt deprivations of the one who has been rich and now is poor is the inability to put the hand lightly in the pocket, and with no thought if it can be afforded or no, to give to those who ask.

While Mrs. Day had been attending to her own customers with one ear, she had been hearing with the other a discussion going on at the opposite corner as to the price and the quality of the butter.

"Ours is from the best dairy," young—very young!—Mr. Pretty was assuring the poor, respectable woman who was hanging back from putting his assertion to the test. "Fresh in, every day, mum. Like to put a bit on your tongue to try it?"

The woman did so, tasting the morsel with an anxious look. "But I can't afford to give you one-and-two the pound, if I can buy it a penny less, only a little way down the street."

"You don't get butter there like this, ma'am;" and young Mr. Pretty, who should have been Master Pretty surely, by rights, conveyed a piece of butter to his own tongue, and tasted it loudly, looking very wise.

"'Best quality, one and a penny.' I see it ticketed up as I come by Coman's." She turned round to the mistress of the shop. "I have always dealt along of you for butter, ma'am," she said. "I haven't no wish to leave you, but where I buy my butter—stand to reason I must buy the rest of my grosheries."

"If Coman is down to that; you shall have it for the same sum;" Mrs. Day promised. Her butter had already been "dropped" twice before, that day, in order to keep pace with the passion for underselling of the new grocer, who had, for the undoing of the widow and the orphan, opened a shop lower down the street. Our poor retailer was selling her sugars, too, for less than she gave for them.

"You must do so for a time," George Boult had informed her. "Coman can't go on like this for ever. He'll get tired of the game soon—if I know anything of trade and tradesmen—then you can stick it on to your goods again."

While the subject of the butter was being debated, the child Franky came in from afternoon school. He was day-boarder at a cheap academy to which other small tradesmen's sons were sent—a school very inferior to that to which Bernard had gone. Companionship with rough, common children had not improved the manners of Franky, nor his habit of speech. He dashed in, with no thought of the deference due to customers, pushed out of his way the lady just deciding to let Mrs. Day try to procure in the town a candle more to her taste, rushed round the counter to his mother.

"C'n I go in to tea with Willy Spratt? Willy Spratt's ma says I may go to tea with 'm. I wish to, very much. C'n I go?"

"No, my dear. We like you to have tea with us. We can't spare you."

"C'n I go, ma? C'n I go? Willy Spratt's waitin' outside."

Willy Spratt was the son of the cutler and his wife, across the way. Very good customers of Mrs. Day, very good people; but—

"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Potter, Franky," Deleah said to divert the child's mind. "You know Mrs. Potter, sir. Where are your manners?"

"Quite 'ell, I thank ye," said Franky without a glance in the direction of the good lady in question, who had not the intention to inquire for his health. "C'n I go, ma? Willy's waitin' outside; and c'n I go?"

"Oh go!" his poor mother said. "Go! But, Franky dear, don't pull your cap in that hideous fashion over your eyes."

But Franky had ducked his head from beneath his mother's hand, dashed round the counter, and was away to the society of the expectant Willy.

In an interregnum of peace between the going and coming of customers Mrs. Day moaned to Deleah over the grievous subject of Franky's deterioration. "He even brushes his hair, and wears his cap, in the fashion of that dreadful Willy Spratt. Being so young he does not stand a chance. He must grow into just a common little boy."

"Never, mama!" Deleah, the unfailing comforter, declared. "Why, Franky looks like a creature of a different mould from Willy Spratt. Franky, with that dear little nose of his, is distinctly aristocratic. Don't laugh! He is indeed. You and he are, you know; and any one can see it."

"Nonsense, my dear," the mother said, but smiled and was comforted on that score. "It is inevitable, I suppose," she went on, "that we fall into the way of speech of those around us. But it vexes me. Have you noticed that even Bessie habitually speaks of Mr. Gibbon now without the 'Mr.'? 'Gibbon' said this or 'Gibbon' did that. I don't like to mention it to her, but it offends my ear."

"I wouldn't say anything," Deleah counselled. "We know that Bessie is—so very easily upset."

"Poor Bessie!" the mother said. Both of them had a vision of Bessie drumming her heels on the floor in the hysterics into which a few thwarting words would throw her. "What about Bessie's love affairs?" Mrs. Day presently asked. "I should be so thankful to see Bessie with a home of her own. She would be so happy, married. But—?"

She paused questioningly upon the "but," knowing it to be a very large one.

"I don't think Reggie means anything, mama."

"No," acquiesced Mrs. Day, sadly shaking her head. "I can't think how Bessie can be so blind. Yet, if it were otherwise, what an escape out of Bridge Street it would be for her."

Deleah was silent.

"Or for you?"

Deleah laughed with her colour high: "I would not marry Reggie Forcus if he were stuffed with gold, mama."

Mrs. Day turned away to wait upon the untidy little servant girl from over the way whose family had suddenly "run out of vinegar."

Her eyes had been sharp enough to see on which of her daughters' faces it was that Reginald Forcus's gaze dwelt; she had divined the attraction which drew the pleasure-loving, much sought young man to sit patiently for hours in the evening, watching the girls at their work. She looked, drearily, the vinegar being measured and the customer gone, between the intervening biscuit tins and pickle jars into the street. She had begun to cherish a dream that if not Bessie it might be her pretty Deleah who, through Reggie, should find a way out.

"Supposing he really wanted to marry either of us you would not surely like it, would you, mama?"

And Mrs. Day was obliged to admit with a kind of shame that she would.

"That silly, irresponsible, baby of a young man; without two ideas in his head!"

But the mother knew if his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the value of worldly goods.

"I suppose the end will be Bessie must marry Mr. Gibbon," she said, with an effort at resignation and putting away from her unwillingly the golden dream. "I should not blame Bessie," she went on judicially. "He is a good and steady-going man, although so very quiet. Have you noticed, my dear, how very quiet Mr. Gibbon has become?"

"Yes, mama."

"I suppose it is love which makes him so quiet."

She supposed so, Deleah said. That he had been quieter still would have pleased her better. She could have spared his fierce "I love you," whispered behind the tablecloth when he and she had stooped simultaneously to pick up a knife which had fallen yesterday; his impassioned "Only look at me!" fiercely breathed last night over the candlestick he put into her hand. Both Bessie and her mother looked on the Honourable Charles as Bessie's property. Deleah was frightened at, and ashamed of, these irregular demonstrations.

"He is a commonplace, uninteresting looking man—but for something there in his eyes. I don't know if you have noticed what I mean, Deleah?—Yet he will make a safe husband, with no thought in his head but for Bessie; and I suppose we must make up our minds to the sacrifice."



CHAPTER XVII

What Is It Now?

"Any message for your son, ma'am?" Mr. Gibbon inquired one night at supper-time of the widow, and announced that business called him to Ingleby on the next morning.

He did not add that he went with special instructions to inquire into complaints again made of Bernard Day by the manager of the branch shop, and to bring back a report on which George Boult could act.

"The boy will have to be removed from Ingleby," the draper said. "I want to know if I am justified in discharging him on the spot, or whether I may risk giving him another chance."

Mr. Boult had stayed his hand from dealing summarily with the young man, as it had been his instinct to do. After all, he was William Day's son; the son of the one friend whom, in all his life, he had made. The son of the widow of Bridge Street, also; and he, George Boult, had been the arbiter of her destiny, of the destiny of her children, and was proud of the fact. The result had not been altogether satisfactory. No amount of teaching or of bullying would ever make a business woman of the mother; but then he knew that he had enjoyed the teaching and bullying. He felt a glow of satisfaction, when he read her name in the small white letters on a black ground above the shop door, "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," and remembered it was he who had caused that legend to be written there. It pleased him to recall the handsome woman in her silks and laces, who had extended a patronising hand to him, now and again, on those Sunday afternoons he had spent with her husband—the haughty-looking, dark-skinned, dark-eyed beauty, as he conjured her to his mind's eye—and then to enter the gloomy little shop, and to see this same woman—was it in truth the same?—her black gown covered by a large white, bibbed apron, white sleeves to her elbows, standing behind the counter, to weigh treacle into a customer's jar, or to descant on the merits of various scrubbing soaps.

"My doing," George Boult said to himself, and was pleased.

His mother had many messages for Bernard, of course. A parcel of a couple of shirts for him too, which she and the girls had made for him, stitching busily together after the day's work was done. He was to write oftener. He was to send her his socks to mend. To take long walks into the country; and not by any means to be tempted to spend his evenings at the horrid hotel which Mr. Boult had complained to his mother he frequented.

In the morning a little parcel was put into the boarder's hand, with the request that he would give it to Bernard. It contained a sovereign the poor woman, who had not a penny to spare, had taken from a sum due to meet a certain account, that day. The boy's salary was so very, very small; the wholesale house must wait for payment.

When Deleah arrived home from her school on the afternoon of that day, she found the shop in charge of Mr. Pretty alone, a state of things never permitted except at meal-times. Deleah went into the house and ran upstairs with a foreboding mind. Reaching the dark landing upon which the sitting-room opened, her heart sank within her at the sound of loud weeping proceeding from that room. Her mother was dying, or dead, bemoaned by Bessie, she decided, her thoughts leaping to the worst that could befall.

It was a relief to her, therefore, to see Mrs. Day seated in her accustomed chair, grey and stricken of face, but alive, and as she maintained an upright position, presumably well. The mother was looking straight before her with blindly staring eyes, paying no heed to Bessie, stretched upon the sofa, uttering howl upon howl.

"What is it now?" Deleah asked, standing in the doorway as if struck there. "Tell me quickly what it is." Her mind flew afield in search of awful possibilities. "Is Bernard dead?" she asked.

"Oh, I wish he were! I wish he were!" Bessie cried, and flung herself into a sitting position. "I wish he were. Bernard is worse, far worse than dead. Bernard has enlisted for a soldier!"

Deleah shut the door and came forward into the room. "Is that all?" she asked. Her poor little face was white, her eyes wild with fear. That Bernard was in prison had been what she dreaded to hear. "Oh, mama, if that is all, it is not so terrible."

Then there came a knock at the door and Charles Gibbon came in. Deleah turned upon him: "You should not have told them; you should have told me," she reproached him.

"I don't think so," he said bluntly. "Why should you bear the brunt of everything?"

Mrs. Day was incapable of speech, her poor lips shaking, the hands twitching which lay helpless on her lap.

Bessie looked at her. "Poor mama! Poor mama!" she moaned. "This will kill mama! The disgrace will kill her!"

"Hush!" said the Honourable Charles, and turned upon her, shocking her into silence. "You should have more control over yourself, Miss Bessie. Hysterics never helped any one in the world, yet."

"Hysterics!" repeated Bessie, but was so astonished that she ceased to moan.

"Mrs. Day," the boarder went on, "I told you the news about your son a little abruptly perhaps, but I did not consider I was telling you bad news. Many"—he was going to say "better men" but changed it into—"many better off than he have done the same thing, and it has been the making of them. I tell you straight, under all the circumstances, I think he has done the best thing he could."

"I must buy him off, of course," Mrs. Day said, paying no heed. "Do you know how to set about it, Mr. Gibbon; and what it costs?"

If Mr. Gibbon knew he did not say.

"To think of Bernard being a common soldier—a private!" Bessie began again, and shook once more with sobs. "If he comes here, Deleah, do you think he will expect us to walk out with him? We can never be seen with Bernard again—never! Never! Never!"

She had quarrelled continually with Bernard, but she had been fond of him, and proud of his good looks. Poor Bessie's grief was selfishly shown, but it was genuine grief all the same.

"Discipline will be the best thing in the world for him," the boarder promised. "A friend of mine who also went to the b—— who also enlisted, for certain reasons, is an officer now."

"Bernard will have no luck," Bessie declared. "No luck ever comes our way."

"There's no good waiting for luck, Miss Bessie—"

"Will Mr. Boult buy him off?" the widow interrupted. No argument weighed with her. She listened to no attempt at comfort. "I must go to Mr. Boult at once, and ask him to do it."

"If you take my advice, you won't, ma'am. If you ask him ever so, he won't."

"I will beg him, on my knees," the poor lady said.

Deleah followed Gibbon to the landing. "Is there anything you are keeping back?" she whispered to him. "You can tell me. I am not Bessie."

"The boy's been a fool—but there's nothing that can't be hushed up."

Her eyes full of fear clung to his face; she was determined to hear the worst. "You must tell me," she persisted.

"A couple of bills were paid over the counter; only for small amounts. Your brother did not—did not—"

"You mean he took the money for himself?"

How white her face was! The sound of Bessie's sighs and moans came from the sitting-room. Deleah opened another door on the landing. It was that of her mother's bedroom, but she cared nothing for that. With a hand on the boarder's arm she led him in there, and shut the door.

"Bernard stole the money?" she whispered. She had no thought of herself, or of who it was she held by the arm, had forgotten that he loved her. To know the worst, and to know it at once, so that in some way her mother might be spared the knowledge, was what she wanted.

She had no pity on herself, but he had pity for her—abounding, overwhelming pity; the brave little white-faced girl, who did not moan, nor fling herself about, nor talk nonsense; who had courage, who faced things.

"Your brother gave the receipts all right," he said slowly, "but he omitted to enter the accounts as paid in the ledger."

"And the money? What did he do with the money?"

"The money is all right. The firm loses nothing."

"How do you mean? Tell me."

"The money was found in his room."

"Who found it?"

"I found it. It was only for a small amount."

"And paid it in? So that they lose nothing? So that they all know that Bernard had only been careless? That he was not a thief?"

"It's all right," he assured her. "There's nothing for you to worry about—now."

"You are sure you are keeping nothing back? You would not deceive me? There is nothing more?"

Gibbon hesitated; he was not a man who told lies; and there was something more. "It seems he made debts—debts that out of his salary it was impossible for your brother to pay."

"Yes?"

"But he did pay them."

"He did? Then—?"

"You see, Miss Deleah, they're wishful to know where he got the money from to pay with."

She looked at him with knit brows anxiously for a minute, then her face cleared and a glad light was in her eyes. "Why, I can tell them!" she said, "I sent him the money to pay the debts."

"It was fifty pounds—about. You sent it?"

"Oh, the money was not mine. It was Sir Francis Forcus's money. I asked him for it. You can tell them I sent it, Mr. Gibbon; but tell them no more. Sir Francis wished it to be a secret between him and me."

"Oh!" Gibbon said, and roughly shook her hand from his arm.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you fast enough; oh, yes."

"Then why are you angry?"

"You might have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Deleah said. The several reasons she could have given it seemed kinder to withhold.

He pounced upon her, his eyes blazing. "I don't like these 'secrets' between a man and a girl."

Deleah drew back with a little offence. "If you knew at all what Sir Francis is like you would not say such a thing as that, Mr. Gibbon."

"What is he like?"

"Infinitely—infinitely above everything that is not kind and generous—and noble."

"He is just like any other man, except that he has more money."

Deleah put on her little air of dignity. "I thank you for telling me everything about my brother," she said. "I am so relieved that there was nothing worse to hear."

He watched her as she walked across the gloomy little square of landing and entered the other room. When she held her small head so poised on its long graceful throat, when the corners of her lips were ever so little turned down, the small rounded chin turned up, and the wonderful black eyelashes swept her cheeks he was afraid of her, little bit of a girl of less than half his age as she was; a girl who had been a child but two years ago, when he had come to the house. A girl whose lips as far as he had ever heard had never spoken one ungentle word; a girl who had pity on drowning flies, and carefully turned away her foot from the abject worm. But then he was always trembling before her, either with love or fear.

The impulse to tell her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him. The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the fifty pounds to Sir Francis Forcus. And he was one who saved his money anxiously for the end he had in view. Would she call him "kind and generous and noble" if he told her? He more than doubted it.

"We can't possibly walk about with Bernard in the dress of a private soldier," Bessie was saying when Deleah returned to the sitting-room. "We have come down, mama, I know, but we have not come down so low as that; and Bernard can't expect it of us."

"I shall buy him off, if I have to sell the clothes off my back," Mrs. Day said, oblivious of the fact that her wardrobe in the market might perhaps have fetched the sum of thirty shillings.

"I would not be in too great a hurry, mama."

"You think nothing about the sufferings of your poor brother, Deleah. My darling son."

"I do think of him. I think he will be very angry if this is done at once. You must wait until he has had time to get sick of it."

"As soon as the shop is closed I shall go to Mr. Boult and beg of him to help me to buy him off," Mrs. Day persisted.

She rose up stiffly from her chair and stood beside it, her hand grasping its back, waiting for the strength to come to her to take up the burthen of business again. Ah, if only she had leisure for grieving, if she might lie on the sofa and cry, as Bessie was doing, what a luxury it would have been!

The assistant had been left to "get up" an order for her most important customer in her absence. He had put the wrong sugars into parcels, and the wrong tea. In reaching the tin of "foy grass" from the top shelf, he had knocked down and broken a bottle of piccalilli, catching its contents in the crystallised sugar drawer. Mrs. Day was very gentle with him, who was younger even than poor Bernard.



CHAPTER XVIII

The Dangerous Scrooge

Mrs. Day was spared the errand to Mr. George Boult on which she had been bent, for that gentleman, before the time for putting up shutters was reached, having had an interview with his Manchester man, sought the widow in her shop.

Since having been made a magistrate, it was to be observed that certain changes had taken place in the appearance and the attire of the successful draper. He affected now the light-coloured tweed suit of the country gentlemen, rather than the black decorous garments of trade. A deerstalker replaced the tall hat to which his head was accustomed, and he wore it, as was the fashion among the younger generation at that period, ever so little on one side. His short beard was trimmed to a point, his moustache turned upwards at the ends, on his hands were gloves of tawny-coloured leather. Altogether he now presented a figure which, in spite of the undue protuberance of stomach, and the shortness and thickness of neck, he had the satisfaction of knowing to be strangely rejuvenated and quite up-to-date.

"Business not very lively to-day, ma'am?" he said in his quick, hard way, looking round upon the empty shop.

It was about everybody's tea-time. A slack hour, Mrs. Day reminded him.

"Coman's was full, as I came by," he told her. "He's got a sugar in his window at three-ha'pence; one great placard quoting primest butter at elevenpence; another setting forth that a quarter pound of tea would be given away with every half-crown spent in the shop."

Mrs. Day sighed despondently. "We can't cope with him," she said. "There is no good in trying."

"What do you intend to do then? Do you suppose families will buy their groshery" (he was always pronouncing it "groshery") "of you when they can buy it cheaper, a few shops farther down? Why should they, ma'am, come to think of it?"

"They won't, of course," Mrs. Day acquiesced, "but we may as well be ruined through lack of custom as through selling our goods for less than we give for them."

"I'll tell you what will ruin you," he said brusquely. "And that is lack of spunk." He derived a pleasure from the belief, apparently; he announced it with so much gusto. "In business you must not be a coward, ma'am. You must go for the man that's 'underselling' you, stand up to him, pay him out of his own coin."

Poor Mrs. Day heard him with a fainting spirit, dreary-eyed. What did she care for paying out Coman, down the street! Her heart was full of Bernard.

"Now look here, ma'am; re-dress your window. Where's your young man? Where's Pretty?" Pretty, who cordially loathed George Boult, reluctantly appeared. "Look here, young man; to-night, when you've up-shuttered, clear out half your window. Shove it full of the best sugar you've got. Put a card on it—one that'll shout at 'em as they pass. Letters that long, do you see, and black—black. 'Our three-ha'penny sugar. Comparisons invited.' Just that. See? And, look here again, ma'am, stick a ha'penny, or a penny a pound, on to your other goods, to make up. Understand?"