"Yes, truly. I'm going to be still-room maid at the Towers. You see," she went on to explain cheerfully, "father doesn't like my being here, having to wait on the riff-raff as well as the gentry. He says it is not the best training for a young lady; and when father says a thing, that thing's settled. They are all swells at the Towers; lords and ladies and toffs from London. It will be fine." But Mr. Sparrow was far from sharing her jubilation. "The Towers!" he exclaimed disconsolately. "Why, they be four mile off, or more. You'll forget me, Mercy, among all them fine folk; lords, flunkeys and valets and butlers and swells like that, with their dashin' London ways." "Oh, don't you look so silly," the girl remonstrated archly. "Noblemen and butlers and all that sort aren't anything particular to me. If you'd smarten yourself up a bit instead of looking like a ploughman, you might get a place there too. Especially now the new Lord Quorn is coming home and Colonel Hemyock will have to turn out." Mr. Sparrow perked up a little. "Ah," he observed with an air of indifferentism to the warmer subject, "Lord Quorn; he that has been found in Australy. I suppose when her ladyship turns out you'll be off to London with her." "Time enough to think about that when she goes," Miss Popkiss returned evasively. "Lordship or no lordship, he can't turn her out before her time's up. And then it might suit me to stay on with him. I wonder what he'll be like," she added, with a significant touch of feminine interest. Mr. Sparrow's prosaic face grew dark. "Oh, Mercy," he cried, gloomily wrathful, "if I was to see another man, lord or lout, making love to you, I'd smash him." Her words having produced what was precisely the desired effect, Miss Popkiss proceeded to tone it down with a provocative smile. "You can think of smashing when you see it, Tom. And, I say----" "Yes, dear?" said Tom, inwardly despising himself for being so easily mollified. "I--I hear father in the bar," she suggested significantly. Mr. Sparrow took the hint and another kiss. Perhaps his ruffled feelings were responsible for its being a louder osculation than prudence dictated. Anyhow an approaching voice croaked-- "Mercy! Mercy! What are you after?" "Quick, Tom," the girl directed in a hurried whisper, "slip out of the window." Mr. Sparrow was already there, with a foot over the sill. Its passage to the ground was, however, prevented by the substantial back of some one who was crouching outside the window. The disconcerted Philander swiftly drew his leg back again as though it had been stung, and made a slinking rush for the table under which he crept just as Popkiss _père_, his rotund face coruscating with suspicion, filled the doorway. "What are you up to, I ask you?" he demanded of his daughter with what seemed unnecessary vehemence as his small eyes roved in puffy cunning round the room.