"Why is she going?" Winnington shrugged his shoulders kindly. "Wants a training--wants something more to do. Quite right--if it makes her happy. You women have all grown so restless nowadays." He laughed into the rather sombre face beside him. And the face lit up--amazingly. "Because the world's so _marvellous_," said Delia, with her passionate look. "And there's so little time to explore it in. You men have always known that. Now we women know it too." He pondered the remark--half smiling. "Well, you'll see a good deal of it before you've done," he said at last. "Now come and look at what I've been trying to do for the women who complained to you." And he shewed her how everything had been arranged to please her, at the cost of infinite trouble, and much expense. The woman with the eight children had been moved into a spacious new cottage made out of two old ones; the old granny alone in a house now too big for her, had been induced to take in a prim little spinster, the daughter of a small grocer just deceased; and the father of the deficient girl, for whom Miss Dempsey had made herself responsible, received Winnington with a lightening of his tired eyes, and taking him out of earshot of Delia, told him how Bessie "had got through her trouble," and was now earning money at some simple hand-work under Miss Dempsey's care. "I didn't know you were doing all this!" said Delia, remorsefully, as they walked along the village street. "Why didn't you tell me?" "I think I did tell you--once or twice. But you had other things to think about." "I hadn't!" said Delia, with angry energy. "I hadn't, you needn't make excuses for me!" He smiled at her, a little gravely, but said nothing--till they reached a path leading to an isolated cottage-- "Here's a cripple at last!--Susy!--You here?" For as the door opened to his knock, a lady rose from a low seat, and faced them. Winnington grasped her by the hand. "I thought you were already gone." "No--they've put it off again for a week or two--no vacancy yet." She shook hands formally with Delia. "I came to have another look at this boy. Isn't he splendid?" She pointed to a grinning child of five sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, and dangling a pair of heavily ironed legs. The mother proudly shewed them. He had been three months in the Orthopaedic Hospital, she told Delia. The legs twisted with rickets had been broken and set twice, and now he was "doing fine." She set him down, and made him walk. "I never thought to see him do that!" she said, her wan face shining. "And it's all his doing--" she pointed to Winnington, "and Miss Susy's." Meanwhile Susy and Winnington were deep in conversation--very technical much of it--about a host of subjects they seemed to have in common. Delia silent and rather restless, watched them both, the girl's sweet, already faded, face, and Winnington's expression. When they emerged from the cottage Susy said shyly to Delia--