Drifting with a rather rapid tide of mingled human beings, Miles and his mother soon found themselves stranded beside the coffee-shed. Retiring behind this they continued their conference there, disturbed only by wind and weather, while the distribution of hot coffee was going on in front. Meanwhile, when leave was obtained, Armstrong made his way to the Institute, where the old scene of bustle and hilarity on the arrival of a troop-ship was going on. Here, in a private room, he discovered Emmy and the _cause_ of her not appearing on the jetty. "Look at him--Willie the second!" cried the little woman, holding up a bundle of some sort. The soldier was staggered for a moment--the only infantry that had ever staggered him!--for his wife had said nothing about this bundle in her letters. He recovered, however, and striding across the room embraced the wife and the bundle in one tremendous hug! The wife did not object, but the bundle did, and instantly set up a howl that quite alarmed the father, and was sweetest music in the mother's ears! "Now tell me," said the little woman, after calming the baby and putting it in a crib; "have you brought Miles Milton home all safe?" "Yes, all right, Emmy." "And is he married to that dear girl you wrote about?" "No, not yet--of course." "But are they engaged?" "No. Miles told me that he would not presume to ask her while he had no home to offer her." "Pooh! He's a goose! He ought to make sure of _her_, and let the home look after itself. He may lose her. Girls, you know, are changeable, giddy things!" "I know nothing of the sort, Emmy." The young wife laughed, and--well, there is no need to say what else she did. About the same time, Mrs Milton and her son were seated in another private room of the Institute finishing off that interchange of confidences which had begun in such confusion. As it happened, they were conversing on the same subject that occupied Emmy and her husband. "You have acted rightly, Miles," said the mother, "for it would have been unfair and selfish to have induced the poor girl to accept you until you had some prospect of a home to give her. God will bless you for doing _the right_, and trusting to Him. And now, dear boy, are you prepared for bad news?" "Prepared for anything!" answered Miles, pressing his mother's hand, "but I hope the bad news does not affect you, mother." "It does. Your dear father died a bankrupt. I shrank from telling you this when you were wounded and ill. So you have to begin again the battle of life with only one hand, my poor boy, for the annuity I have of twenty pounds a year will not go far to keep us both." Mrs Milton tried to speak lightly on this point, by way of breaking it to her son, but she nearly broke down, for she had already begun to feel the pinch of extreme poverty, and knew it to be very, very different from what "well-off" people fancy. The grave manner in which her son received this news filled her with anxiety.