"At once," he exclaimed. "I'll go down to-morrow; he's a good sort really, and he won't leave us in the lurch. There now"--he took her by the shoulders, and shook her rallyingly, and looked into her eyes--"the tears are gone--aren't they? That's right; give me a smile, if it's only an April one. And keep that in your mind clearly, my dear; it'll be all right." Patience crept away upstairs noiselessly; when presently Moira came in, she saw the old woman seated in her chair as usual, with her eyes closed, and apparently asleep. But that night, when Moira lay wakeful--thinking long thoughts, and striving to look into a future that was dark and frightening, the door of her room was softly opened, and the old woman came in. For a moment or two the queer-looking old figure in night array stood looking at the girl with a trembling lip; she was a little afraid to go near her. Then, stirred to tenderness by some understanding of the girl's desperate need, she set down her candle, and stretched out her thin arms; and with a cry Moira rose to meet her, and the two faces--the young and the old--the one of the woman with no experience, and the other of the woman who had learned so much--were bent together, and the kindly rain of tears fell from them and eased their hearts. There seemed no need for real words; it was the mere confused murmur of one woman to another, in a matter that only a woman could know and understand. Dawn, striking into the poor room, saw Moira sleeping in the old woman's arms, and Patience, cramped and tired, keeping watch with her, as she had done through the long night. By the morning Charlie was gone. To do him justice, he carried with him the remembrance of the girl's tear-stained face, and of her broken, dejected figure as she had leaned on the back of the shabby old chair, and whispered the dread that was in her heart. That made him valiant to face his father--to secure something for the future that should mean not only something for himself, but for Moira. He was very indefinite about it in his own mind; he only told himself, again and again, as he had told her, that something must be done, and--that it would be all right. He strode through the little town of Daisley Cross with his head erect; albeit he was a shabbier figure than he had been in the old days. It was a curious feeling, because he could not remember ever having been shabby in that place before; and yet with that new virtue on him he was not ashamed. In a sense, he felt that he could meet his father, because that father must inevitably recognise that here had been no squandering of money; but that Charlie, though unfortunate, must have lived hard and lived carefully. Which was the impression he desired to create.