"What is the child crying for?" he asked, stopping abruptly on the threshold. There was a slight tone of authority in his voice which angered Esther still more. "What is it to you what he is crying for?" she said, turning quickly round. "What has the child got to do with you that you should come down ordering people about for? A nice sort of mean trick, and one that is just like you. You beg and pray of me to let you see the child, and when I do you come down here on the sly, and with the present of a suit of clothes and a toy boat you try to win his love away from his mother." "Esther, Esther, I never thought of getting his love from you. I meant no harm. Mrs. Lewis said that he was looking a trifle moped; we thought that a change would do him good, and so----" "Ah! it was Mrs. Lewis that asked you to take him up to London. It is a strange thing what a little money will do. Ever since you set foot in this cottage she has been curtseying to you, handing you chairs. I didn't much like it, but I didn't think that she would round on me in this way." Then turning suddenly on her old friend, she said, "Who told you to let him have the child?... Is it he or I who pays you for his keep? Answer me that. How much did he give you--a new dress?" "Oh, Esther, I am surprised at you: I didn't think it would come to accusing me of being bribed, and after all these years." Mrs. Lewis put her apron to her eyes, and Jackie stole over to his father. "It wasn't I who smashed the boat, it was mummie; she's in a passion. I don't know why she smashed it. I didn't do nothing." William took the child on his knee. "She didn't mean to smash it. There's a good boy, don't cry no more." Jackie looked at his father. "Will you buy me another? The shops aren't open to-day." Then getting off his father's knee he picked up the toy, and coming back he said, "Could we mend the boat somehow? Do you think we could?" "Jackie, dear, go away; leave your father alone. Go into the next room," said Mrs. Lewis. "No, he can stop here; let him be," said Esther. "I want to have no more to say to him, he can look to his father for the future." Esther turned on her heel and walked straight for the door. But dropping his boat with a cry, the little fellow ran after her and clung to her skirt despairingly. "No, mummie dear, you mustn't go; never mind the boat; I love you better than the boat--I'll do without a boat." "Esther, Esther, this is all nonsense. Just listen." "No, I won't listen to you. But you shall listen to me. When I brought you here last week you asked me in the train what I had been doing all these years. I didn't answer you, but I will now. I've been in the workhouse." "In the workhouse!" "Yes, do that surprise you?" Then jerking out her words, throwing them at him as if they were half-bricks, she told him the story of the last eight years--Queen Charlotte's hospital, Mrs. Rivers, Mrs. Spires, the night on the Embankment, and the workhouse.