“My poor John, my poor dear old John!” she said, leaning the fairy head against him which ought to have had a crown of stars round it instead of a mite of a bonnet. Kate took no thought of her bonnet at that moment. She sat by his side, and talked and talked, healing his wounds with her soft words. And Parsons drew a chair quietly to her and sat down in the window, turning her back upon the pair. “Lord, if I was to behave like that,” Parsons was saying to herself, “and somebody a-looking on!” And she sat and stared out of the window, and attracted a barrel-organ, which came and played before her, with a pair of keen Italian eyes gleaming at her over it from among the black elf-locks. Parsons shook her head at the performer; but her presence was enough for him, and he kept on grinding “La Donna é Mobile” slowly and steadily, through her thoughts and through the murmuring conversation of the other two. Neither Kate nor John paid any attention to the music. They had not heard it, they would have said; and yet it was strange how the air would return to both of them in later times. “I see now you could not write,” said Kate; “but still you have scribbled something to your mother. I think I might have had a word too. But I did not come to scold you. Oh, that horrid organ-man, I wish he would go away! You might have sent me a message by papa.” “I did not see him,” said John. “Or by Fred Huntley. You saw him, for he told me---- John! what is the matter? Are you angry? Ought I not to have come?” Then there was a pause; he had drawn his arm away out of her clasping hands, and all at once the tingling which was like pleasure became pain again, and gnawed and burned him as if in a sudden endeavour to overcome his patience. And yet it was so difficult to look down upon the flushed wondering face, the eyes wide open with surprise, the bewildered look, and remain unkind to her. For it was unkind to pull away the arm which she was clasping with both her hands. He felt himself a barbarian, and yet he could not help it. Huntley’s name was like a shot in the heart to him. And the organ went on with its creaks and jerks, playing out its air. “That organ is enough to drive one wild,” he said, pettishly, and felt that he had committed himself, and was to blame. “Is it only the organ?” said Kate, relieved. “Yes, is it not dreadful? but I thought you were angry with me. Oh, John, I don’t think I could bear it if I thought you were really angry with me.” “My darling! I am a brute,” he said, and put the arm which he had drawn so suddenly away round her. He had but one--the other was enveloped in bandages and supported in a sling. “Does it hurt?” said Kate, laying soft fingers full of healing upon it. “I do so want to hear how it all happened. Tell me how it was. They say the bank might all have been burned down if you had not seen it, and papa would have lost such heaps of money. John, dear, I think you will find papa easier to manage now.”