"Much too strong for me," complained the old man. "I suppose I shall have to put up with this for a bit; but it's hard--it's very hard." He grumbled his way out of the room, still looking disdainfully at the big packet of tobacco he held. Old Paul looked round at the children. "It was the list, dears," he said penitently. "I remember now he did say the full-flavoured, and I put it down; it only shows how careful anybody ought to be--doesn't it?" He was almost dejected as he went on with his supper, while the children watched him; presently he found voice to ask a question. "What have you been doing all day?" "Moira and I have been in the woods; we took sandwiches, and tried to think that you'd be coming any minute," said the boy. "Yes--and Jimmy made me afraid, because he said anything might happen to you in London--and that you might never come back," said the girl of the dark eyes, watching the man wistfully. "That was only in fun," retorted the boy. "Never frighten people only in fun," said Old Paul gravely, as he put out a hand to the child as though to comfort her. "And Alice"--he looked across at the child on the other side of the table--"what has Alice been doing?" There was a curious, subtle difference in his fashion of addressing the younger girl; it was not a want of cordiality, but rather as though he feared to offend her--desired, indeed, to win her good graces. She answered him demurely; her smile was as sweet and as gentle as her voice; but the words were not child-like at all. "I thought it would be best for me to call and see the Baffalls," she replied. Old Paul nodded, with a covert glance at the faces of the boy and girl on either side of him. "The little lady!" he murmured in admiration. "They were very glad to see me, Old Paul," went on the child, "and Mr. Baffall saw me home afterwards." And be it noted that she spoke with no sense of priggishness or superiority, but rather with the air of one to whom the more formal events of life inevitably appealed. Old Paul rose to his feet; he kept an arm about the slim body of the dark-eyed girl Moira. "Let's see the parcels," he said, with a gay laugh. "Oh--the shops I went into--and the stairs I climbed--and the lifts that rattled me up and down--and the people who wouldn't understand what I wanted!" He swept them all out into the hall, there to find themselves confronted not only with the parcels, but with Patience, with a stern eye upon the clock. "Time for bed!" she exclaimed, and the man stopped guiltily, with the children holding to him. In a hesitating nervous fashion, still with that guilty schoolboy aspect, he pleaded for them. "Special occasion, Patience, you know--and though I wouldn't for the world gainsay anything you cared to suggest--still, if you didn't mind----"