It Never Can Happen Again

they usually find, in practice, that it is necessary to stand matters over, because of the cab. This does not, of course, apply to where a man-servant is kept, who can pay fares dogmatically, and conduct himself like the Pope in Council. But where the yearnings of both parties have to be suppressed all through a discussion of the fare and a repulse of the unemployed, whose services have been anticipated by your own mercenaries ... well!—do what you will in the way of cordiality afterwards, it is chilling, and you can't deny it. We know we are putting this in a very homely way, but this is a very homely subject.

If that over-ripe cabman had shown a different spirit, and accepted the shilling or so too much that Challis offered him, and gone his way in silence, who knows what course events would have taken in the Challis household? But he not only said, "My fare's nine shillings!" but came down from his box as one comes down from a box when one's mind is thoroughly made up, and one ain't going to stand any more of one's ex-fare's trifling. He also unbuttoned a series of coats, and produced from his inner core a pocket-book, supposed to contain documentary evidence of some sort. It was eight mile o' ground, and three on 'em outside the radius. Challis was irritated at the low valuation put on his understanding by this cabman, and disputed a point he would have given way on had an appeal been made to the goodness of his heart to shut his eyes to obvious truth in the interest of extortion. He was also obsessed by a woe-begone creature who had run all the way from Putney Bridge to assist with the one portmanteau, but had been headed off by Martha and Elizabeth Barclay. Who, thus intercepted, had substituted a moral claim on account of the distance no one had asked him to cover for a legal claim for carrying a portmanteau into a house, and making the latter smell of his wardrobe till properly aired and the mats shook next day. The consequence of which was that, when the cabman had reconstituted himself on his box, under protest, and departed, Challis, eager to make up for the postponement of his greeting by a good husbandly accolade, found himself met by, "As soon as you've done with the man!" and, turning, perceived an injured being touching a soaked cap, and awaiting recognition or execration in a spirit of meekness, but quite determined not to go away without a settlement.

"Run all the way from Putney, have you? What the devil did you do it for? Nobody asked you." Here a gratuity, of coppers.

"Won't you make it up a shillin', Captain? It is 'ard, when a man's been out all day looking for a chance, and walked all over Battersea and Chelsea and round Brixton—ask anybody if I ain't!—and nobody to 'elp me to a job or say the word for me.... Thank ye kindly, Captain!"—here more coppers; this mode of address proving irresistible—"only if it was made up to a shillin' I could get my tools out of pawn, being a carpenter by trade...."

Challis pushed the door to in the man's face with something like an oath. Then at last he got a moment's leisure for his overdue kiss, which he paid liberally, as he said: "Well, it is jolly to be back, at any rate! How are the kids?" For, whatever the malady he had made the awkward name for had been, he wasn't going to show any consciousness of it.

"The children you mean? There's nothing the matter with them that I know of. Now make haste; because it's a small leg. If I'd thought you were going to be so late it could have been rump-steak."

Challis looked at his watch. "H'm!" said he. Which meant that seven-forty was not so enormously late, and really more elastic arrangements might have been contrived. "I shouldn't have time for a warm bath, should I?"

"I must tell Elizabeth Barclay, then. I dare say she can keep the meat back. Only say!"

"Oh, it don't matter, if there's any difficulty...."

"My dear!—why should there be any difficulty! You've only got to say.... Well!—am I to tell Elizabeth Barclay, or am I not?"

Challis decided, and said. That is, he did not formulate special instructions, his words being merely, "Half-past, then. I'll be sure not to be later," and went straight away to get a bath. It is the greatest of luxuries, as we all know, after a journey, and Challis had made up his mind to have one the moment he detected a flavour of roasting, because that implied plenty of hot water in the bath-room.

Those who measure events only by the bounce they manifest—by their rapidity, or unexpectedness, or by the clamour that accompanies them—will wonder why any narrator of a story should think such flat incident worth recording. But observe!—it was the very flatness of this conversation that gave it its importance, coming as it did on the top of the exhilaration of Mr. Challis's visit, and his parting with that large and lively company of friends less than two hours ago. It has its place—this flatness has—in the lives of these two folk we write of, and really accelerates the story, although it is certainly slow in itself.

How very much Challis would have preferred it if his wife had said, "I won't kiss you if you swear," and had then done it quandmême! His mind—a fictionmonger's—reconstructed his reception with things more palatable for Marianne to say, this one among them. Another thing he would have liked, quite inexplicably, was, "Well!—how's the fascinating Judith?" Possibly this was because he would have welcomed help from without to convince him he was indifferent about the young woman. The answer he imagined for himself, which would have been pleasant for him to give, was, "She's coming to see you next week, Polly Anne. So get your best bib and tucker ready!" But there had been none of this, nor the laughter—purely imaginary—that he garnished it with. Only the flatness as recorded.

"Perhaps it was all that confounded cabman," said Challis to himself and a bath-towel like a toga, after a very respectable warm bath—not equal to that at Royd, though—and a cold douche. He had to hurry up to keep his word at half-past eight. But he kept it.

"Well!" said he, as he joined his wife in the drawing-room, where she was awaiting the announcement of dinner, Challis conceived.

"Well what?" She touched the nearest bell-handle. "They'll know it's for dinner," she said, and the remark seemed relative. "Why well?"

"Well everything! Tell me all about the kids, about who's called, about where you've been, about everything. Come, Polly Anne, I think you might unbutton a little and be jolly when a chap's been away three weeks. How are John and Charlotte Eldridge?"

"Yes!—I think you might have asked about them. John has been at death's door. There's dinner!..." Challis made a sympathetic noise about Mr. Eldridge, but postponed inquiry. Nothing made it easy until he found himself a lonely soup-consumer; because, you see, Marianne wasn't hungry.

"What has it been?" Too concise, perhaps. But really death's door, with John on the step, had been the last thing mentioned.

"What has what been?"

"What you told me. What's been the matter with John?"

"Peritonitis. But he's going on well now. Dr. Kitt says he'll have to live very carefully for some time.... I know what you mean, but it's very unfeeling to laugh. Besides, I don't believe he eats more than other people." Challis felt indefensible. Just fancy!—there he was, eating gravy soup all by himself!

"I wasn't laughing, old girl," said he. "Poor Jack Eldridge! Peritonitis is no joke. I'll go round to-morrow."

"It won't be any use. He won't be able to see you. Yes—you can take the soup, Harmood. Mr. Challis isn't going to have any more...."

A mere rough sample of the conversation. It was not unlike others of the same sort on like occasions. But was Challis wrong in imagining that, this time, it was a little accentuated! Was it only his imagination, gathering suggestions from the atmosphere that his home had been that of self-denying endurance during his absence, and that his own selfish indulgences elsewhere were being actively forgiven for his sake? What had he done to deserve forgiveness? If he had known that he was incurring it, would he have committed the offence at all?

Also he did feel that Marianne hadn't played fair. What could have been more genial than her send-off, three weeks ago?—more apparently genuine than her refusal to accompany her husband to Royd on the ground of a real dislike for Society? To be sure, a throb of conscience reminded him of a certain breath of relief—almost—that he drew at the decisiveness of this refusal. Had Marianne been sharp enough to see it? His instinct told him that a woman might have a sharp department in her mind on points of this sort, and yet make a poor show in logic and mental philosophy.

The sense that he was a naughty boy that had been eating three-cornered jam-tarts, and giving no one else any, hung about him, and made him unlike himself. If only that abominable cabman had not spoiled the part he had sketched out for himself on his first arrival, one of exaggerated self-denunciation for his beastly selfishness, and tragi-comical commiseration for Marianne as Penelope or Andromeda! It would then have come so much easier to deliver that message from Judith Arkroyd. And now! Just look at now! Now, when he actually found himself fallen so low as to half-ask if he might smoke in the drawing-room! Not quite, of course; that would have been too absurd! But he said something or other, or Marianne would not have replied as she did.

"As if I ever minded! How can you be so ridiculous!" This was good and lubricative. But she spoilt it by adding that there was the little ash-pan. Nevertheless, by the time the incense from her husband's cigar, and an atmosphere of consolatory coffee, were bringing back the flavour of a thousand and one post-prandial hours of peace in days gone by, the malignant influence of that cabman began to lose its force, and there was concession in the way she added: "I suppose you weren't allowed to smoke in the drawing-room at Boyd's—Royd's—whatever it was?"

"Royd. Cigarettes—yes! Hardly cigars. At least, nobody did it. The young women smoked cigarettes."

"Those sort of people do it now. At least, Charlotte Eldridge says so. I don't know."

"Wish you'd smoke, Polly Anne! Have a cigarette now."

"Oh no!—I've tried often enough to know I don't like it. You must go away to some of your Grosvenor Squares if you're not happy smoking by yourself."

Things were pleasanter. Why couldn't Challis let it alone, instead of at once discerning an opportunity of delivering Judith's message? To say, as he did, "No—I've had enough of the Grosvenor Squares for some time to come," wasn't unblemished truth, but it was an excusable stepping-stone under the circumstances, with poor dear slow Polly Anne waiting for consolation. The mistake was in what followed. Our own belief is he would have done much better to make a forget of that message until his life was running again in a married channel. He began badly for one thing. You should never say "By-the-bye!" in order to introduce the thing uppermost in your mind.

"By-the-bye, Polly Anne, it won't do to forget that the young female Grosvenor Square wants to call on you." To this Marianne made no answer, and her husband had to add: "Miss Arkroyd—Judith!"

It became difficult not to answer. Marianne fidgeted. "I suppose she'll have to come," she said.

"Well!—I suppose so." There was a shade of asperity in this. But what followed softened it. "You know, really, Polly Anne darling, you'll have to put up with the fascinating Judith a little, for the sake of the play. Besides, she sent you such a very nice message."

"Very kind of her!" However, Mrs. Challis has quite her share of human inquisitiveness, and if she wants to hear the message after her sardonic speech, she must make concession. "What was the very nice message?" she asks grudgingly.

Perhaps Challis's powers of fiction made him able to imagine exactly how he would have behaved if Judith Arkroyd had been merely a showy, smart-set sort of a girl—or merely an intelligent young woman, without a figure to speak of—or, still more merely, one of those excruciating well-informed persons of importance phrenologically, but with no figure at all. On this occasion he felt he knew exactly what his conduct would have been had he undertaken an embassage from the merest of these three—the last. And he modelled his conduct accordingly.

"Don't be miffy with the poor woman, Polly Anne," said he. He had thought of "poor girl," but decided on something bonier, with hair brushed on to the shape of the head, and a black dress. This refers, of course, to the provisional lay-figure he elected to give his message from.

"The poor woman!" Marianne repeated, looking rather suspicious over it. But the image of the lay-figure in his mind, telepathically communicated, produced a certain softening, so he thought. He moved from the bent wood rocking-chair he was smoking in to the sofa beside his wife.

"I'll tell you exactly her message word for word," he said. He did so, as from the lay-figure. And, indeed, he almost wished that fiction had been a reality, as far as this message went. He could have sketched out the proposed visit so much more easily, in his inmost mind; which was, to say truth, incredulous about its turning out satisfactory to either lady, their respective personalities being as supplied.

"I suppose she'll have to come," said Marianne drearily. "Why can't she come when other people are here?"

"Because she wants to see you, my dear. She doesn't want to see the other people."

"Why need I be in it at all? Can't you introduce her to Mr. Magnus, and let them settle it between them?" For in his last letter Challis had enlarged on the Aminta Torrington scheme, and his wife was quite au fait of the position so far.

He hummed and hawed, and flushed slightly. The removal of a column of ash from his cigar seemed to absorb him for a moment. "I don't think you quite see all the ins and outs of the situation, Polly Anne. Don't you understand?..."

"Understand what?"

"Well—I'm sure Miss Arkroyd really wishes to know you. You see, I've talked so much about you." This was not really a true truth, for conversation about Marianne had always been at Judith's instigation. "But there are other considerations, apart from that...."

"What considerations?"

"Well, you know, we do live in a world! Don't we now, Polly Anne?"

"I thought it was something of that sort. Charlotte Eldridge said it would be."

"What did Charlotte Eldridge say? I wish she'd keep her tongue to herself...."

"But you're getting angry before you know what she did say."

"No, I'm not! I mean I'm not getting angry at all. Why should I get angry? Come, old girl, be reasonable! What did Charlotte Eldridge say?" Nevertheless, it is clear that Mr. Challis is keeping his temper—keeping it admirably, perhaps, but still, keeping it! His wife's answer shows painfully how well she is keeping hers.

"Charlotte Eldridge said I should be wanted the moment I told her about Aminta Torrington.... No!—it's no use pretending, Tite!... Besides, I'm not hurt. Why should I be? Only I don't see why there need be a make-believe friendship between me and this young lady—and me to have to put on my black silk, and a new Madeira cake—and to give Harmood directions to say not at home! Charlotte Eldridge and I have talked it all over...."

"Oh!—you've talked it all over?" Challis either is, or pretends to be, inclined to laugh.

"Yes, we have. And you know how sensible Charlotte is about things of this sort.... No, Titus, you can try to make what I say ridiculous, and I dare say you'll succeed, but you know what a good friend Charlotte has been to me from the beginning...." Marianne pulls up short suddenly in the middle of her speech, with a suggestion in it of a tear corked in at its source. She gets the cork well in, and ends with: "I won't say any more about it. You shall arrange it just as you like your own way"—but this with the amenability of a traction-engine making concession to its handle.

Challis, who had felt it rather hard that a tearfulness derived from tender memories of Mrs. Eldridge's loyalty in past years should slop over into his department, became awake to the fact that brisk strategy would be needed to prevent that cork coming out. "Come, I say now, Polly Anne!" said he with jovial remonstrance. "Fancy you and me falling out about a Grosvenor Square young lady!" He burst out laughing, roundly. "We have shot up in the world. My word!" He got his arm round an unresponsive invertebrate waist, in spite of a collision with a hook, which rather took the edge off his caress. Why cannot ladies have some sort of little smooth tie, just at that point, in case? It was a very slight blot on the scutcheon, however, and, indeed, would have counted for nothing with Challis had not Marianne offered him her mole to kiss instead of her lips. For she had a mole—a small one, certainly—just on the cheek-bone. Now a liberal, unreserved warmth in this act of the drama would have been invaluable. It would have helped Challis to snap his fingers at whatever it was that was taunting him with having effected for politic purposes a half-derision of Judith as a Grosvenor Squarian—and that, too, after the cordial message to his wife!

However, it was quite impossible to pretend—it would not be fair to say admit—that they were quarrelling, after that. In fact, it was so established an assumption that their old confidence was again on its old footing, that Challis felt it would be ungenerous to Marianne to change the subject for safety's sake. Besides, he wanted an answer to a question.

"You didn't tell me what it was Charlotte did say, Polly Anne.... I dare say she was all right, you know." The use of her Christian name alone was a concession—showed good-will. Speech is full of such niceties.

Marianne got up and broke a coal on the fire. She couldn't think of two things at once, naturally. This made a pause before answering, and a pretence of having omitted an answer because of the slightness of its subject was plausible.

"Oh—Charlotte? It really was the merest talk by the way. She only said it would keep people from talking nonsense."

"What would?"

"If the Grosvenor Square young lady and I were bosom friends. She was joking, you know."

"I see what she meant," said Challis; and seemed to, reflectively. But really he was crossing Mrs. Eldridge out of one or two passages in his good books where her name still occurred. Confound her! Couldn't she leave it to him to instruct Marianne—who was much too slow to find out anything for herself—on this point? However, it was best to confirm her, on the whole. He continued: "Of course, if it were thought that you and she were at daggers drawn, spiteful people would say things. They always do if they get a chance. But what I look at is that she is Aminta Torrington. It's quite miraculous. You never saw anything so happy." He quite forgot that lay-figure.

Marianne waived discussion of the dramatic aspect of the question. She knew nothing about these things—was an outsider. But she seemed to register concession on the main point. She supposed the young woman must come, and she could tell Charlotte and Maria Macculloch and Lewis Smithson to be sure not to call that day, and then Harmood could say "not at home." Better make it Thursday, and get it over.

"Didn't Charlotte say anything else?" This was chiefly conciliation on Challis's part. He did not wish to seem in a hurry to get away from Mrs. Eldridge, or to resent her discussion of his affairs.

"Oh—she talked, of course! You mean when I saw her yesterday? Only she was still so anxious about John."

"He'll be all right, won't he? Did you say peritonitis? Are you sure? Because peritonitis is the dooce's own delight."

"The doctor says there is no occasion for the slightest uneasiness." Whereupon Challis settled in his own mind that John Eldridge would be spared to his wife and relatives, for the present at any rate. Peritonitis inside a week, and no need for uneasiness at the end of it! He allowed the medical report to lapse, and referred again to what Charlotte had said. It certainly seemed, to judge by Marianne's reply, "I thought she was quite mistaken, you know," that Charlotte had "talked, of course," although she was so uneasy about John.

"What about?" But he didn't want to seem to catechize, so he discovered that his cigar—which he was quite half through—didn't draw well, and lit another. Then he was able to say, "Let's see!—what were we talking about? What Charlotte said." He resumed his place beside his wife, too manifestly to receive the answer for her to withhold it.

"It was only general conversation, about what Miss Arkroyd's family—with all their ideas—would think of her going on the stage."

"My dear! I must say I do wish you hadn't mentioned Miss Arkroyd to her at all. I hope you made her understand she must be quiet about it?"

"Oh, she won't mention it—except perhaps to John." Challis looked alarmed. However, John couldn't talk much at present, even if peritonitis only meant obstruction. "Besides, I didn't really tell her anything. It was an accident. I showed her something else in your letter a week ago, and by the merest chance she read it by mistake. It wasn't her fault."

"Nor yours. I see! But what did she read?"

"Only where you said you would have to talk to the old boy about his daughter's stage-mania ... nothing that could possibly do any harm."

Now, Challis's conscience had been uneasy about the part he was going to play in helping Judith towards a secret arrangement which was sure to outrage the feelings of her family. So, when he said "Oh!" to this, he had to jump abruptly on to make it seem a casual, ordinary "Oh!" He succeeded pretty well. "What was Charlotte's idea?" said he.

"The same idea, of course. As long as Sir Thingummy knew all about it, no one could possibly blame you."

"I don't know that it's really my concern. I don't know that it's any of our...." A pause here is due to his duty to syntax.... "I mean to say—that it is the business of any one of us. Miss Arkroyd is no chicken. In fact, I'm not sure that her age won't stand in her way—for training, I mean. However, of course I shall take care that her family knows all about it." Challis's voice sounded well in his own ears, and he was convinced that no fault could be found with his behaviour so far. As to anyone saying he should not have made the promise about Mr. Magnus of the Megatherium while he was a trusted guest at Royd, that was sheer nonsense. He felt quite nettled with Marianne for saying, "Oh, haven't you done it?" But he wasn't going to prolong discussion about it.

He felt nettled, too, with himself for feeling, when Marianne left him to read, before going to bed, the letters that had come for him—with a charge to him not to make a noise when he came up—nettled for feeling that he had got through the evening well, which was absurd; and that to do so he had assumed a certain roughness in reference to Judith, to accentuate his equable indifference to her personally, which was absurder. What was it all about?—was the question he asked himself. And then another that arose from it naturally, What was what all about? The distraction afforded by a handful of miscellaneous correspondence gave him an excuse for ignoring the latter question, which, indeed, seemed to him the more unanswerable of the two.

One thing, however, he was glad of having achieved. Marianne would write that letter, he felt sure. Only he would just keep his eye on her to see that she did it. He would not have to write to Judith, "Please don't come and see my wife!" in any form, transparent or otherwise.

For anything the story shows at this point, Alfred Challis and Marianne might have tided over any little difficulties arising out of the visit to Royd, if they had only been judiciously let alone. It was those blessed Peacemakers!

CHAPTER XI

VATTED RUM CORNER, AND CHESTNUTS. A YOUNG TURK. HOW LIZARANN TOLD MOTHER GROVES OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. OF AN AMBULANCE, AND WHAT WAS IN IT. HOW LIZARANN WENT HOME WITHOUT DADDY

Lizarann Coupland used to wonder how ever Daddy could go out in the cold and stop all day. It was noble of him to do so in the public service—that was how Lizarann thought of it. For she believed the insinuations embodied in song by "the boys" in Tallack Street to be malicious falsehoods, and as for "the boy" whose aunt sold fried eels and winkles next door to the shop where her father purchased his shaving-soap, she only hoped that a good basting her own aunt wished to give to the whole clanjamfray of 'em—meaning boys generally—might be concentrated on the unsheltered person of this particular boy. She had improved her acquaintance with him, and had come to the conclusion that for presumption and self-conceit, for ill manners and very doubtful good feeling, that boy was without a parallel.

During the whole of this acquaintance it had never occurred to Lizarann to ask this boy's name. And but yesterday she had committed the tactical error of surrendering her own christened name in exchange for peppermint drops. The moment of the present writing is a deadly afternoon in January, gettin' on for four, but that dark you'll have to light the gas in the end, and may just as well do it at once. The place is the one spoken of in an earlier chapter as Vatted Rum Corner, and that boy is a settin' on the rilin' eatin' of four 'ot chestnuts off of Mrs. Groves's bikin' trye, for a 'ape'ny, and to be allowed to warm your fingers at the grite. He had had to make room for other customers.

Lizarann came up cold, and envied the feast. The boy was a self-indulgent boy, or seemed so. For he only said, "These four's for me, bought and paid for, square. You git some for yourself, orf of Mother Groves. Two for a farden's your figger, Aloyzer." And then he sketched a clog-dance on the hard-trodden snow of the pavement, with a mouth quite full of chestnuts.

Lizarann felt the heartlessness of his attitude. Yesterday he had cajoled her into an admission that her name was Lizarann by offering peppermint drops. Now he had nothing to gain by an offer of chestnuts, and kept them all himself! She happened to be in funds, and could have purchased four for a 'ape'ny, and in that case would as like as not have given that boy one, as an exemplar towards generosity. But at the moment a higher interest claimed her attention. He knew her name, and she didn't know his. An iniquity, clearly! How could she remedy it?

Now Lizarann had contrived, childwise, a curious idea about her name. It may have originated in a chant she herself had joined in frequently, merely for the sake of the music:

But it certainly had acquired its full force from an expression made use of by her Aunt Stingy, who had spoken of a young person as having "lost her good name." What the young person was called by her friends, afterwards, was a problem Lizarann had given a good deal of thought to. And she was now unable to dissociate the young person's position altogether from her own. If her name had not been lost as a necessary implement of social intercourse with the world at large, it at least had been surrendered with no per contra, in the case of an immoral and worthless member of it. But she felt that, could she become possessed of his name, as a set-off, the balance of righteousness would be adjusted. And she was much more anxious about this than about the chestnuts.

"What's your nime?" said she, after self-commune which suggested no less trenchant way of approaching the subject.

The boy paused in the clog-dance. "Moses," said he. And then went on as before.

"Nuffint elst no more than Moses?"

"That's tellin's." The boy said this absently, and did some more steps. Then he simulated a graceful subsidence of the dance, ending in an attitude that seemed to acknowledge the applause of a delighted throng. But a commercial possibility had presented itself. "What'll you stand," said he, "for to be told my name, and no lies?" This seemed mercenary; but then, had not Lizarann herself surrendered hers for a deal? Why condemn him?

No!—Lizarann lived in a glass house, and wouldn't throw stones. But she would make conditions. "Real nime all froo," she said. "Moses is lyin' stories!" For, you see, this was a crafty boy, and might consider the concession of a true surname alone would discharge his obligations under the contract.

"Then on'y Moses," said he; and began an encore—presumably, as it was the same dance. But he was not too preoccupied by it to take off the shell of his fourth chestnut, and when he had done so he smelt it, with disappointment. For it was mouldy. An idea struck him, and he acted on it.

"Marcy me, no!" said Mother Groves of the chestnuts when requested by him to 'and over a good un, fair and no cheating. "The riskis lies with the buyers. Where 'ud I be, in half the time, at that rate?"

"Then I'll 'ave the law of yer. Just see if I don't." He danced again, and this time his dance seemed to express confidence in his solicitor. But presently he stopped, and offered a composition: "You lookee here, Missis Groves," he said. "I'll 'and you back the mouldy one, onbit-into and closin' over the busted shell, acrost a clean new un, and I'll take another highp'orth off you, and pay square. If that ain't fair, nothin' ain't! But you got to look sharp, or the chance'll be gone."

Mother Groves rejected the chance. "It ain't consideration enough to go again' the rules on, and me to take my 'ands out in the perishing cold. Make it a penn'orth and pick yourself, all exceptin' the three top."

"Hin't got no penny! Feel in my porket and see. It's open to yer to feel. There hin't no horbstickle. Here's a highp'ny and the bloomin' nut, shell and all. Mike your mind up!"

But Mrs. Groves's mind was made up, apparently. The boy then suggested that his motives had been the prosperity of trade, throughout; he was, in fact, or said he was, full up till dinner-time. So he must have been dining late, recently.

At this point Lizarann made a proposal. She, too, had a halfpenny, and was ready to pool this halfpenny with the boy's, and give him sole enjoyment of the extra chestnut, but only on one condition. He must tell his name, and no lies.

Mrs. Groves brought her hands out in the perishing cold—pathetic old hands, a young girl's once—and made two even groups of four nuts each. Then, leave being giv', the boy chose the compensation nut; only he took his time like a young 'Eathen as he was. Then Mrs. Groves, as assessor and umpire, required his name as a preliminary to final liquidation.

"'Orkins. Frederick. Frederick 'Orkins. Could have told yer it wasn't Moses any day of the week! 'And over!" And thereon he and Lizarann each had four bloomin' nuts, so 'ot you couldn't 'ardly 'andle 'em.

"I shall keep mine for my daddy, and keep 'em 'ot too," said Lizarann. She placed them nearest her heart, and felt that it was good to do so. They was a'most too 'ot, in the manner of speaking; but then a small undergarment protected her, when discreetly scroozled up fluffy.

"You best 'ide 'em well up," said Frederick Hawkins. "Here's a coarper comin' along. Don't you let 'em make no show, or he'll get his 'and on 'em."

But he only said this to perplex and annoy, and create unnecessary panic; and Lizarann knew that, every bit as well as we do. So she merely said: "Jimmy 'Acker can foight you," and enjoyed the warmth fearlessly. Her daddy's stick was not audible yet, coming along by the wall. He was late to-day. Lizarann's orders were to wait at the corner till she heard it, and then call "Pilot," that he might know she was waiting for him, and be happy. For he always had pangs of doubt that he might not meet her this time. Think of that little thing—for he knew how small she was still, by the feel, though there was no one to tell him what she was like to look at—think of her coming along that crowded street alone, to meet her daddy! She for her part had no misgivings about his coming. "Never you fear for me, lassie," he had said. And he knew, Law bless you!

"I'll Jimmy 'Acker 'im!" said Frederick Hawkins boastfully. "I could 'tend on two like 'im at wunst. How old do you make him?" Which showed the vaingloriousness of his character, for clearly he knew nothing about Jimmy Hacker.

Lizarann couldn't commit herself to the age of the latter. But she could to his bulk and prowess. "He's thicker than you," she said, and added, with recollection of a combatant defeated by Jimmy Hacker: "He can foight a boy twelve next birthday."

"Then he ain't any so much to count on. I don't go by ages. Weights is what I go by. Any number o' stun I can foight, up to eight stun seven. You tell 'im to keep indoors, or I'll fetch him somethin' for to rek'lect me by. You see!"

But Mother Groves interposed to rebuke and check this inflated and defiant spirit. "Don't you pay no attention to that boy, my dear," said she to Lizarann. "He's that full of lip there's no placin' no reliance on a word he says. If I was his mother I should know just where he wanted a good canin'. Ah!—and he'd get it too, night or mornin'. A young cock-sparrer I call him, and if he don't come by a bad end it'll be a moral. Ah!—wait till I find out where your mother lives, and see." Mrs. Groves worked rising indignation into her speech, after the manner of her class. Even so the Choctaw or Cherokee stimulates himself to battle-point. But Frederick Hawkins remained unmoved. He knew the old woman couldn't ketch holt upon him. He became most offensive, assuming a nasal drone with an approach to a chant.

"I got a widdered mother. She keeps a fish-shop. And I ain't a-goin', neither, for to tell you where." He threw a reminiscence of his previous dance into this.

Now Lizarann knew perfectly well that the fish-shop was next door to where her daddy bought his shaving-soap. But she wasn't going to tell. No nice little boy or girl ever tells. The particulars kept back on principle may relate to young cock-sparrows on whom no reliance can be placed, or to mere heathens—as in the present instance—but as for acquaintin' their parents, guardians, or other responsible grown-up persons, what they done, or anything likely to lead to conviction—who ever heard of such a thing? Even the London servant class retains this one trace of an honourable usage. It won't tell.

Mother Groves merely referred to the ease of discovering fish-shops; especially when localized, as this one practically was, by the constant presence round her corner of a heathen residing there. She then gave all her attention to the conservation of vital heat; and it was needed, for her poor old clothes were thin on her poor old body. It wasn't 'ardly a reg'lar bad day, not to call it so, but it was a frost that was going to give a lift to the plumbin' trade, and do a rare lot of good that way. For the only good that can come now to this world is evidently through the destruction of something it has worked at the making of in years past, in order that people who have little may have to pay people who have less to do a bit of repairs to it, so that it won't want no lookin' to again, not yet awhile.

Can we wonder?—we who have read, for instance, of the revived prosperity of ship-building, shown by the putting down on the stocks of several new ... destroyers? But never mind this!—pardon it and get back to the story and the degrees of frost at Vatted Rum Corner.

It wasn't so bad then, not when once you was out in it; it had been a tidy sight worse two days ago, afore it froze so hard underfoot; why—the busses couldn't keep goin', and a 'orse fell down so soon as ever you got him on his feet! And as for cabs, they wouldn't set foot outside of the yard, because where was the use? You couldn't stiddy yourself on your feet, not unless there was cenders on the track, or thored with boiling water.

Lizarann bore it bravely, in spite of chilblains and a blue complexion. Frederick Hawkins was blue; but either his heathenism or some other attribute enabled him to bear the cold defiantly. "It ain't freezin' here," said he, denying the obvious. "Hicey cold it was Bart'sey Park Sunday. The hice makes it cold 'acos of the skatin'." And Lizarann accepted this view of cause and effect. She might have disputed it had she not been beginning to feel uneasy about her daddy.

"Why, child, don't ye go along to'ards meetin' him? He'll be comin', I lay." Thus Mother Groves. And the boy added: "Why don't yer 'ook it along down to the Rilewye, to see for yourself? You 'ook it! 'Ook it orf! I'm tellin' of yer." But Lizarann only stood on her two feet alternately, and hugged the dying heat of the chestnuts. They wouldn't be no good for daddy. Alas!

"I was tolded not to do it," said she. "Yass!"

Mrs. Groves approved. "Quite right, my dear, not to disobey your parents. But your daddy he'll come, you'll see."

But Frederick Hawkins had another code of morals. "I'd disobey my parents if I had any to speak on. If I'd a dozen on 'em, I'd disobey the bilin'." Mrs. Groves pointed out that by doing this Frederick would be brought into collision with his Creator, and dwelt on the impolicy of such an action. But he continued obdurate.

"I'd disobey the kit on 'em. You'd see, if you kep' your eye open." Then, addressing Lizarann, he added: "You give me a chestnut, and I'll disobey your parents for yer. You jist try! See if I don't!" Then, when Lizarann timidly produced the chestnut, in great doubt of whether her action was justifiable, he added: "See if I ain't back again afore yer know where y' are," and, after a slight preliminary quick-step or double-shuffle, fled away into the growing dusk.

"You keep your sperrits up, child," said Mother Groves. And, as is usual when one hears that one's spirits want keeping up, Lizarann's went down. But she felt the old lady's goodwill, and went and stood close up to her, taking care to choose the side away from the roasting-box, lest she should seem simply seeking warmth. However, she was soon invited round to the other side. The warmth made her communicative.

"My daddy he's been to sea," she said. "Only in real ships, and come home again. The Flying Dutchman she never come home." This did not explain itself to Mrs. Groves. She drew a false inference.

"She went to the bottom, I lay. And all aboard of her belike. Lord be good to us!"

Lizarann shook her head. "Not the Dutchman. She's afloat, every spar on her,"—she religiously gave Jim's exact words, with a sense of saying a lesson—"and to stop afloat till the Lord comes to judge sinners from repentance." She got a little confused here, but it sounded good, and her hearer was impressed.

"Now only 'ark at that!" said she. "I'd 'a said you was a God-fearin' child. And you may never need doubt but it's all true, my dear!" Mrs. Groves, perhaps, was prepared to ascribe truth to any narrative that had a religious phrase or two in it; still, she was probably impressed with the little person's manner, for she referred to Frederick Hawkins, in contrast. "Now, that young Turk, he's no respect, and won't come to no good end, I lay."

But Lizarann didn't want the conversation coaxed away from the Flying Dutchman. "Daddy seen her, himself," she said fervently; and then, resuming the lesson-manner: "Every stitch o' sail on her set in a three-quarter gale freshenin' from the south. And the look-out forward, he seen her too. And Job Collins, he seen her. And Marmaduke Flyn, he seen her. And Peter Cortright, he seen her." All these were essential items of the often-told tale.

Mother Groves's hearing was none of the best; so when she condemned the time-honoured legend as outlandish and French, it may be she had really supposed that some of the expressions were in a foreign tongue, any variety of which she would naturally consider French, failing instruction to the contrary. But Lizarann's reference to the Lord, to sinners, and to repentance, was strong enough in itself to keep suspicions of Voltaire and Tom Paine in abeyance. Mrs. Groves therefore allowed the story to continue, and felt fortified against the heresies abounding on the Continent by the approved religious bias of the narrator.

"Peter Cortright and Marmaduke Flyn they was both on the mainyard reefin', alongside o' my daddy, and Job Collins he was aft by the binnacle. Then Peter Cortright he sings out to my daddy to look; and my daddy he looked and seen her, carryin' all sail afore the wind. And then, no more time than what you says budget in, she was agone away, out o' sight." A pause came here, for dramatic impressiveness. Then followed, for reinforcement of testimony: "But Job Collins, he seen her, too, plain!"

Mrs. Groves only said, "My sakes, now!—to think of that." But rather as a courtesy to the narrator. She would no doubt have followed her meaning better if thawed indoors before a nice warm fire. She certainly could not, or did not, admit to her mind a comparison that surely hung on the outskirts of the tale—a parallel between that moment on the great sea, and now! To think of it all! Of the three reefers out on the yard, struggling with the mighty wind; of the rising seas whose crested foam it blew to spray; of its voice as it whistled through the drenched cordage, and made a whisper of the sailor's shout to his mate, that spoke of the ship he saw out yonder—the ship that, whatever she really was, was to become the Flying Dutchman in the memories of all the three! And then to think of what that child—that almost baby girl—told about her as she nestled, welcome enough, to the side of the old soul that had spent her last decade selling, in the London Streets, the chestnuts that had ripened in the southern sun, above the slopes the vines grew on. To think of the sordid and darkened lives, closed round in the intolerable hive of their own contriving, so stunted and suborned to a spurious contentment as never to long for an escape; so strange to the meaning of the word "rejoicing" as to find a version of it in the filth-house at the corner; whose swing-door, to say the truth, the little maid looks rather enviously at as it opens and closes, letting out the vapid bawlings from the human fools within into the silence of the streets, and suggesting jolly bad ale and new to the cold and empty passer-by! To think of the millions near at hand, all sunless beneath the great black pall that has for weeks past shrouded their visible world, but has left them unchoked as yet and confident, and even a little boastful—Heaven knows why!—of some strange indefinite advantages carbon and sulphur confer on those who can breathe them and live.

No two items of the parallels could be more unlike, surely, than the reefers out on the yard in the great sea wind, and such chance wayfarers as are to be seen now—few enough, for all who can keep indoors prefer to do so—making the best of their slippery way home, let us hope, to the native joint and vegetables and rice-pudding. Certainly—so one would have said—none more unlike than those of this approaching crowd, close on the heels of three policemen in charge of a wheeled ambulance, hand-driven, working slowly along the least slippery part of the road. And most unlike of all, surely, the human burden, sot or reprobate perhaps, that the closed curtain of the ambulance hides from us. But he would have been wrong who said so. For it was Jim himself that was inside that ambulance, and he ought by rights to have come along that road on his feet.

"You lie still, my good feller. The doctor he'll see to you." The policeman who says this to the interior of the ambulance says it as one to whom any form of poll-parrotting—that is to say, human speech—is distasteful. He slaps his gloves for warmth, as he walks beside the ambulance. He is a reserve man, who has come out in charge of it. But a moment after he listens again; there may be exceptions, after all, to a rule of universal glum silence! What is this ambulance case saying?

"It ain't for myself, master. It's for my little lass. She comes for to fetch me home to the Green Man ... house at the corner ... very nigh to us now, as I take it...." Jim's voice is bad, and he is speaking against pain, gallantly. A subordinate constable says, "That's so, too!" and this confirmation reinforces Jim, who goes on, recognizing the voice: "Your mate, he knows her. You'll tell her, master. I'll trust ye for a good man ... there's only a little bit of harm done ... say I've had worse happen many a time afore...." But Jim is at the end of his tether. His voice goes faint. His instruction was clear, though.

"See for the child, Clancy," says the first officer. "And tell 'em at the bar to send out a small brandy." Clancy goes on ahead. He is a person incapable of feeling surprise, so when he meets a potboy approaching with a glass of brandy, he makes no useless inquiries, but merely points backward towards the approaching ambulance.

The potboy carries the brandy on, and the officer gets it down Jim's throat somehow. "Very smart of you, Thomas," says he, inventing a name for the potboy, a complete stranger to him. "Nothin' like being beforehand!"

But Thomas disclaims any credit for himself. His action was, he affirms, due to instructions transmitted to him by a young customer. His report is: "He cuts in and he says, says he, p'leece accident, he says. Pickford's waggon gone over a bloke, he says. You cut along out with a nip o' brandy for a stimilant, he says. That's what the orficer says, he says. And off he goes!" As the brandy is consumed, it clearly will be a good contribution to taciturnity to say nothing about it. Moreover, the potboy, miscalled Thomas, conveys that his governor, at the Man, is not a blooming screw; and that the brandy ain't worth going to law about. The officer suggests, however, that a second nip would not be unwelcome to himself, and would bring the total up to the point of being chargeable to the Force.

There is time for all this, as a case of this sort must be carried gently, apart from the fact that the slippery road makes caution necessary. And by the time the ambulance reaches the corner Lizarann is sticking to loyally, mindful to the last of her promise never to go beyond where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum," her first tendency to break into panic-stricken sobs, on hearing that her daddy has had an accident, is already well under control; the policeman Clancy, whom she knows by sight, and has even spoken with, and who therefore is trustworthy, having told her that her daddy will soon come round, and never be a penny the worse.

"Now you're going to be a good little girl, ain't you, and not make a shine?" Thus the policeman, on vernacular lines, supposed to be soothing to the excitable. And Mother Groves, partly in deference to a uniform, adds: "You do like the gentleman tells you, my dear, and go along where he says!" This suggests to Clancy, who had at first intended to limit himself to negative injunctions, to say: "Yes, you run along home, little miss, and tell 'em your daddy's being took proper care of."

But the terrified scrap, blue with the cold, half-choked with the hysterical gasps she is fighting against so bravely, as bidden, sees a deadlier possibility still before her in her arrival at home without her daddy. It was the dread of having to tell, more than the fear of being accounted the responsible culprit, that kept her glued to the spot. She was docility itself towards constituted authorities of all sorts, but now her feet simply would not move. Oh, what a huge relief it was when the other policeman, him along of the hospital-barrer, said: "Ketch that kid, some of you, and bring her along this way! Can't wait here all day!" He slammed his hands one across the other very hard, not only to procure circulation, but to express promptitude.

The kid didn't want any bringing. She was across the road and beside the ambulance before the instruction to catch her could be obeyed. "You'll do your daddy more harm than good, that way!" said the hand-slapper, stopping short. Lizarann's first instinct, to scramble up the hospital-barrer—to get at her daddy on any terms—had to be combated on his behalf. "Peck the child up, and 'old her acrost the edge," suggests the potboy from "The Man." The constable remarks, "Some o' the public'll be feeling dry by now, and nobody to serve 'em! You best carry that empty glass back, Thomas." But he accepts Thomas's suggestion, and Lizarann is grateful to the strong hands that pick her up to kiss her daddy's face. Was it really his?—she thinks to herself, as they put her down again out of her father's sight, below the couch-rim of the ambulance. She can't speak; he can.

"Ye never cried 'Pi-lot' little lass." How hard he tried to make his voice cheerful, and how well he succeeded, too!—mere mass of breathless pain that he was. The least word a man can speak over whom a waggon has passed, crushing both legs, will show the constitution of a giant behind it, even if it is followed perforce by a groan; and Jim suppressed even that. Were not those his little lass's lips that had just touched his cheek? She, poor child, could only say "Daddy!" or mix it with a sob. Which of the two Jim heard, who can say? But just at that moment the nip of brandy began to tell, and Jim was able to make a great effort. "Never you fret, little lass," he said. "The ship's doctor, he'll make a square job of my leg. You run away home and say I'm took proper care of." What Lizarann's daddy said was to be done was the thing to do, past doubt, and nothing else could be right. Lizarann started straight for home.

Poor Jim!—he knew what he was and where he was well enough. But he couldn't find his words right. So he talked of the ship's doctor, knowing all the while that the surgeon of the Z division was going to attend to his leg. As to the extent of his hurt and how it came about, he knew almost as little as the story does, so far. All he was sure of was that he lost his bearings after leaving his precious board at the barber's shop, was shouted at to stand clear, didn't stand clear, and was overwhelmed by what he should have stood clear of, and knocked silly. Beyond that, the little that had reached him, since he recovered consciousness, related so much to the prophetic certainty of its speakers that what had happened had been sure to happen, and they could have foreseen it any day, that it made him little the wiser. And what the crash had left of his faculties was too actively employed about his child to feel curious about the details of the accident.

Lizarann's first information about it, as she completed the legend of the Flying Dutchman to Mother Groves, was from the boy Hawkins, who came running to report the disaster, just as she was standing cross-examination on her first deposition. Instead of coming straight, he just in at one door of the ale 'us, and out at the other, like you might have said, only half a minute between! He then come crassin' over—this was Mrs. Groves's experience—and queer he looked, causing Lizarann to ask, "Ain't my daddy there?" in alarm. To which his reply was alarming and ambiguous: "Oh ah!—he's there all right enough—wot there is of him." He did not improve this by beginning, in a throat-clearing, gasping way, like a boy whose speech has lost its orientation, "I say, Missis...." Whereat Lizarann, in growing terror, broke into hysterical sobs, and would have started in her despair along the forbidden way, if the sad procession with the ambulance had not appeared, and chilled her to the marrow. She could hear the boy, greatly relieved by the appearance of direct evidence of what had happened, saying that there was nothing to make a hollerin' about; it was only a haccident, and wot could you expect, a day like this? His anxiety to minimize the evil did credit to a human heart that seemed, in spite of appearances to the contrary, to underlie his Asiatic nature. He was even attempting further exhortation towards fortitude when the policeman came up, and he vanished.

In a very few minutes all were gone but Mother Groves and the chestnut stove, in the yellow gloom of the growing fog, waiting for the grandson of the former to come and see to the gettin' of 'em both home. As the old woman looked back on the event, it presented itself to her as an accident, and the accident had been took to the Hospital. That was all. On'y, that poor little thing! But Mrs. Groves soon forgot her, and was back on a great problem of her life—would the stove last out her time, with a bit of patching now and again? It had been that patched already, and was near falling to pieces. And when her grandson come, late, she'd a'most forgotten the accident. There now, she declared if she hadn't!

Lizarann pattered on as hard as she could go, so many steps to a sob, until she got to Dartley Street, and then she heard, behind her, the boy Frederick Hawkins, out of breath. "You ain't any call for to watercart, young un," said he. His manner was superior and offensive, but Lizarann felt that benevolent intention combined in it with masculine dignity. Still, protest was called for.

"I hin't a-cryin'!" she said. "On'y my d-daddy—he's t-took to the Hospital!" It was too dreadful, put into words, and Lizarann broke down over it.

"Who do yer call the worse by that? He ain't, not he!" This boy means well. His better nature is roused, but he has no mode of speech that is not truculent or threatening. He softens a little, though, as he becomes communicative: "Why, I had two uncles and a aunt, flat they was, under a street-roller! And they just off with 'em to the Horspital, and, my eyes and witals!—you should a' seen 'em no better than a fortnit after! Singin' they wos!"

Lizarann disbelieved this story, but not because of the main incident. It was the singing that stuck in the gizzard of her credulity. Uncles and aunts never sang. They might be raised from the dead; may not Lazarus have had a niece? But singing!—no! She merely summarized her views, not arguing the point: "They never sang nuffint."

A proud spirit brooks no contradiction. "Ain't I tellin' of yer?" said the Turk indignantly. He adduced corroborative evidence. "Why!—warn't a boy-makes-his-livin'-by-daily-journals-I-knows's father's corpse h'isted up out of a shore and took to the Horspital stone-dead with the un'olesome atmosphere and fetched to? And dined off of nourishin' food the same evening, and rezoomed work on the Monday?" Meeting no expression of doubt of this case, he adduced another, more calmly. "Likewise Tom Scott, as 'arf killed Parker for five pounds a side, he picked up six of his teeth he'd knocked out, he did; and he run after him to the Horspital, he did; and they stuck 'em in again for Mr. Parker, they did, as good as new. They can do most anythin'." So it appeared. And the cases gained greatly in credibility by the Turk's obviously true recitation of maturer ideas than his own in the language of seniors. It was like Lizarann's own tale of the Flying Dutchman; and she felt it so, and found solace accordingly. She hoped the Turk would go all the way with her, to give moral support, and repeat his experience. You see, this Turk was, to her vision, big, authoritative, and mature. He did not present himself to her as an impident young sprat, in want of local smacking. Which no doubt would have been Mrs. Steptoe's view of him had he come all the way. But he forsook Lizarann at the top of Tallack Street, leaving her grateful to him, all the more for his narration of how he heard the blooming copper say a nip o' brandy wouldn't be amiss as a stimilant, and he told 'em at the Green Man. He added that he expected to be proarsecuted for telling of 'em—recalling a little the saying of the third Napoleon, that the Human Race always crucifies its Messiahs.

So there stands Lizarann trembling on the doorstep, after jumping up to the knocker to strike it back and leave it to execute a single knock by itself, and watching the great white flakes of snow that are beginning to fall at their leisure—no hurry—plenty of time yet for three inches deep of them and their mates before the milk comes in the morning!

CHAPTER XII

HOW UNCLE BOB HAD THE HORRORS. HOW LIZARANN ATE COLD CHESTNUTS IN BED. DELIRIUM TREMENS. HOW JIM COULD SEE AT NIGHT, AND WAS UNDER THE BED. POLICE!

Lizarann could not shut her eyes to the difference between Aunt Stingy, as she anticipated her on the doorstep, and the Police Force, according to her last impression of it. Her aunt's was not a bosom she could fly to for solace in her trouble—well! no more was that of the Force, if you insist on literalness up to the hilt; but metaphorically she would far sooner have had recourse to the latter than the former. She did not, however, expect penalties this time if she could get in her explanation; but she had doubts whether the shortness of her aunt's temper would allow of its development at sufficient length to be understood.

She tried to think of some quick thing to say that would at once reveal her daddy's mishap and the cause of her return without him. But she should have done it before that sepulchral single knock had shown the executive power of the knocker, and brought out by contrast the footless, hoofless, wheelless silence of Tallack Street. Now that its summons to open had been delivered, the poor little shivering author of it could think of nothing at all. She might have done so, though, as far as time went, for she had to repeat her knock after a pause her terror made to seem short; while to her eagerness for any human voice—even Uncle Bob's—it seemed awfully long. But, as it turned out, the best she could have thought of would have been of little use.

The second knock brought about a shuffling in the house that fluctuated a moment, threatened to subside as it had begun, then seemed to decide on action, and approached the door—but heavily, being palpably Uncle Bob, whose mission seemed to be considered complete by the household when he had stood the door on the jar, and left it, without waiting to see who had knocked. Of course, it could only have been Jim and the child. So it looked as if Mr. Steptoe had decided that his duty was discharged by removing obstacles to their entry, and leaving them to close the door their own way. He'd stood the candle down and just left it to gutter in the passage, when Lizarann got inside of the house. There was something gone wrong there, too, evidently.

As her uncle was in the habit of using the adjectives popular in his class rather freely, Lizarann was not surprised when, supposing himself to be addressing her father, and asking him to "shet to that door and keep the cold out of the house," he prefixed one open to many objections to each of his three substantives. But she was surprised at the tone of his voice, which chattered in gusts, as though control over it went and came, and at the way he was crouching over the fire. He had spoken to her father as Jim, and evidently was taking him for granted—had grasped no facts.

"Please, where's Aunt Stingy?" The child could think of no better thing to say. Something was altogether too wrong with her uncle. She could see he was shaking. All things were all wrong clearly, and the world a nightmare!

"In her bed, mayhap!—shamming ill, I take it." Then he raised his voice, but never looked round: "Jim!—why can't you shut up that da-da-damned d-d-door and come inside?" He had a fair convulsion over those words, more like the chattering fit that sometimes comes before a bad attack of sea-sickness than the effects of ordinary cold. Many may not know this sort.

"Father ain't here," was all Lizarann could say.

"Then shet to the damned door till he comes." He could say this and never look round, or notice the sob-broken voice, all a-strain with its terrors, of the little speaker. If he had only cursed her for crying, it would have sounded sane by comparison. Lizarann wished herself back in the street, with the Turk. And how happy those few minutes seemed now, when she did not know about daddy, and was telling Mother Groves about the Flying Dutchman!

She could only stand speechless and utterly terrified at the oddity of her uncle's manner—she well knew his ordinary one, of being in the liquor he was never out of—and was just on the point of mere mad screaming or starting to run God knows where, when the voice of Aunt Stingy came from her bedroom above, also with alarm in it. "Jim, can't you hear, you fool? Leave him to himself, I tell you. He's had the horrors." Aunt Stingy seemed to imply that the horrors, whatever they were, would subside of themselves.

Ill has a fixed point in the minds of young children—a simple maximum it reaches and never goes beyond. Lucky for them that it is so! For a step further would kill. Lizarann's mind could be dragged no farther along the road of terrors that leads maturer lives to self-slaughter or the madhouse. Or it may be some pitying angel wrapped her small soul in a merciful stupefaction, that it might live. For when her aunt's voice came again, peevish and impatient, but without sense of any very abnormal conditions, she was able to answer, "Yass, Aunt Stingy," but not very audibly.

"Why can't you answer when I speak? I tell you, let him bide. He's best to himself, and he's had all what liquor there was.... Can't you answer?... Fetchin' me down!..."

The child understood her aunt's context, for all its elisions. To propitiate, she ran upstairs. A descent in wrath, portended by an exaggerated foot-tramp, was averted by her words: "D-daddy ain't come b-back—he ain't!"

"Why couldn't you speak?—little hussy! You're a child to have in a house. When's he coming?"

"He ain't coming! Yass—he ain't! He's took to the doctor on a barrer. Yass—he is!" And Lizarann, whose small hands, cold and blue, are all tremor and visible unrest from panic, would like to run, but dares not. She has worded her awful message, though. That is something, however much Aunt Stingy may doubt its truth.

"Who's to know you ain't lying? Who's to know he ain't in at the Robin Hood? Now, if you're story-tellin'...!" A bony warning finger should have been enough without any further details of the penalties of falsehood. A reference to a flagellum that had once been inherent in a discarded pair of the speaker's stays—an incredible wooden lathe—ought to have been quite superfluous. But Mrs. Steptoe had had great trials, to excuse her short temper.

However, nothing can alter the facts; and Lizarann can only repeat her statement. Daddy had been took away on the p'leece barrer, with curtings; and his leg was hurt. But the doctor was at the Horspital. This was felt, and offered, as a palliative. Surely it deserved better recognition than, "And why couldn't the child tell me all this before? Keeping me standin' here!" very wrathfully fired off at poor Lizarann. She had told it, and at the earliest possible moment. What could she do more?

Aunt Stingy's reception of the story, which was less émotionné than Lizarann had expected, had its good side. Perhaps the presumptuous boy's description of the powers of Hospitals was not all fanciful, and her aunt's wider experience knew that in a short time daddy would be back home again; not only well and sound, but even better and sounder. Lizarann extracted consolation from her aunt's half callous hearing of her news, without closely analyzing it. Probably Mrs. Steptoe would have been more sympathetic if her own cup of bitterness, like her small niece's, had not been full to the brim already. But sympathy would have intensified Lizarann's solicitude about her father; the fact that the news could be apathetically received by anyone, even Aunt Stingy, fortified her. It may even be that she was braced by her own keen feeling of the injustice her aunt did her in apparently ascribing her father's disaster to her, when really she was only the innocent and most unwilling bearer of the news of it. That, however, was Mrs. Steptoe's attitude. "There's a many'd 'a said you didn't deserve no supper," said she, and claimed a weak good-nature as a quality of her own. She hustled Lizarann into her father's bedroom, with needless collateral pushes in wrong directions, and the admonition, "Don't let me catch you in the parlour, or you'll know of it. Starin' round!" Her truculence, no doubt, had something of a safety-valve character, and she may have thought that the youth of its object would remain ignorant of its full stress, while she herself had the whole advantage of the relief it gave. But really the child understood more than she ascribed to her, and felt its injustice, tempered by the broad consideration that it was only Aunt Stingy.

Mere ferocity towards children is bad enough, but it is hardest to bear when it is illogical. Aunt Stingy was inconsecutive in her grounds of indictment against Lizarann, and this added to the sting of her injustice. No child would have been readier than she to see to her own supper, and hot up half a bloater on the bit of fire that had looked so cheerful in the front room—though she couldn't above half see it for Uncle Bob gettin' in the way—or to stoast a slice of bread afore the bars with a fair allowance of butter on; or to do what she dared not ask her aunt to do, and lie the four chestnuts, which she still treasured mechanically inside her frock, on the top bar where it was flat, to get the heat back in 'em a bit, before cracking off the shell. So it was inconsistent and absurd in her aunt, after telling her to keep where she was or she would let her know, to return presently with all the supper she would get to-night, comin' in so late, and to add: "I wasn't waited on when I was a little girl. Standin' round, expectin' your elders to fetch and carry!" quite ignoring the fact that she herself had paralyzed her niece's activity by instructions not to go outside of that room until she was told to it. And equally so when, without any evidence that the child was going to say a word, she added: "Now, don't you answer me, for that I cannot abide; but just you eat your supper and go to bed, or we shall have you ill next." Of course, it was only when Jim was out of the way that Mrs. Steptoe allowed the shortness of her temper to get the better of her so completely, and on this occasion everything was against elasticity.

Things were all so nightmare-like that nothing could well make them worse, or Lizarann might have been additionally terrified and oppressed when her aunt, before consigning her supper finally to her for consumption, looked it all over closely and said, more to herself than the public: "I don't see any things a-crawling." As it was, in the Valley of Shadows Life was passing through to-night, Lizarann merely said: "There ain't nuffint on the stoast," and began her supper off it sadly. Her daddy's great effort to speak against his pain, and his reassuring words about the doctor, had made that cheerless evening meal a possibility to his little lass. Full knowledge, and a year or so more of life, would have meant inability to eat. But Lizarann was very young, and, moreover, could not credit a possibility of mistake to her daddy. Had he not spoken confidently of the "ship's doctor" making a square job of his leg? She had certainly a slight misgiving that this pointed to his leg assuming a different shape after the operation. All sorts of contingencies hung about Hospitals. You never could tell what grown people wouldn't be at next. But whatever the outcome was, daddy would be there. And this black cloud would roll away.

Aunt Stingy retired, and left Lizarann to herself and her supper with a final imputation of rebelliousness and disobedience that was quite groundless—so its object thought. "You do like I tell you, and go straight to bed when you've e't your supper. Burnin' the candle-ends for nothing!" She then did violence to the understanding, by adding: "The light won't last you out, except you look sharp; and then you'll be in the dark." If a rigid economy was compulsory, how could extravagance be possible? But menace without method was Aunt Stingy's attitude to-night.

Lizarann, left alone, looked all round the tray and under the milk-jug, but could see nothing crawling. She was not so much concerned with the avoiding such things as articles of diet as a County Family would have been, or even the Upper Middle Class; her object was to throw light on her aunt's soliloquy, which she had not ventured to ask the meaning of. Getting no light, she ate the scrop o' bloater, and the stoast and butter, and drank the milk, and did very well, for her aunt was not christened Stingy from any tendency to cut down rations unduly. Only she would have done better still, had she been able to sob less, and if the resources of a pocket-handkerchief ten inches square had not required supplementing by sleeves, which can only be crudely engineered against tear-drops, or their reincarnations. But she got through her supper before ever the candle set alight to the paper, and flared. Then she got to bed before the flare became convulsive; not to be left in the dark with—who knows?—a nightgowned sleeve inside out and no finding where. Because we all feel that spectres are not to be trusted, unless you have something on. Indeed, timid persons are not happy till the whole thickness of the bedclothes is between them and possibly convincing phenomena.