'Of course I want to keep my rooms let. Perhaps you might like to have them yourself; you could have all the clergymen in the town to see you once a week, and a very nice tea-party you'd make in the sitting-room.' Nor was this all; he continued to badger his mother with the bitterest taunts he could select. Quite calmly Kate watched him work himself into a passion, until he declared that he had other reasons more important than the ten shillings a week for wishing to have Mr. Lennox staying in the house. This statement caused Kate just a pang of uneasiness, and she begged for an explanation. Partly to reward her for having backed him up in the discussion, and through a wish to parade his own far-seeing views, he declared that Mr. Lennox might be of great use to them in their little business if he were so inclined. Kate could not repress a look of triumph; she knew now that nothing would keep him from having Dick in the house. 'Shall I write to him to-day, then, and say that we can let him have the rooms from next Monday?' 'Of course,' Ralph replied, and Kate went upstairs with Hender, who had just come in. The little girls were told to move aside; there was a lot of cutting to be done; this was said preparatory to telling them a little later on that they were too much in the way, and would have to go down and work in the front kitchen under the superintendence of Mrs. Ede. Hender was at the machine, but Kate, who had a dressing-gown on order, unrolled the blue silk and fidgeted round the table as if she had not enough room for laying out her pattern-sheets. Hender noticed these manoeuvres with some surprise, and when Kate said, 'Now, my dear children, I'm afraid you're very much in my way; you'd better go downstairs,' she looked up with the expression of one who expects to be told a secret. This manifest certitude that something was coming troubled Kate, and she thought it would be better after all to say nothing about Mr. Lennox, but again changing her mind, she said, assuming an air of indifference: 'Mr. Lennox will be here on Monday. I've just got a letter from him.' 'Oh, I'm so glad; for perhaps this time it will be possible to have one spree on the strict q.t.' Kate was thinking of exactly the same thing, but Miss Hender's crude expression took the desire out of her heart, and she remained silent. 'I'm sure it's for you he's coming,' said the assistant. 'I know he likes you; I could see it in his eyes. You can always see if a man likes you by his eyes.' Although it afforded Kate a great deal of pleasure to think that Dick liked her, it was irritating to hear his feelings for her discussed; she could not forget she was a married woman, and she began to regret that she ever mentioned the subject at all, when Miss Hender said: