resumes his work. A slight sound disturbs him, and he pauses in his work to listen. As he listens he raises his hand to his ear, and directs his eyes towards a screen, which makes, as it were, a second apartment of the cosiest corner of the room. Something that the old man loves lies behind this screen, which is so arranged that the pictures on the mantelshelf and the roses and the ornaments of paper flowers can be seen by the person lying there. A pale, thin, bent old man is he: not bent by age, but by constant stooping; with long hair--a fringe of it only round his head--nearly white, and with a thoughtful expression on his face that would well become a student; which this old man is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Among the decorations on the mantelshelf is the smallest of clocks, in a case of wood, carved most likely by Swiss hands. As the old man sits and works, a click from the Swiss clock warns him that another hour is nearly gone. "Five minutes to nine," he whispers, and he steps softly towards the screen, and moves it so that, when he returns to his seat, he can see what it has before hidden from his sight. With the exception of the click, and presently of the striking of the hour in thin bell-notes, not a sound is heard in the room; for the old man has list slippers on his feet. The shifting of the screen has disclosed a single iron bedstead, on which lies a woman asleep. She is careworn and middle-aged; and when her features are composed, a likeness may be discerned in them to the picture of the girl on the mantelshelf. But at the present moment her lips wreathe distressfully, and an expression of pain rests upon her face. So, in this quiet room, the sick woman sleeping and the old man working, the minutes pass swiftly, and the click of the little Swiss clock is heard again. Five minutes to ten. The old man, who has been growing restless, and who has several times gone to the bed to see if the woman is awake, grows more restless still as he hears the last click. "Alfred promised to be here by this time," he says, with an anxious look at the door as he lays his work aside. On a little table near the bed are two medicine bottles, one large and one small, which, with their labels tied nattily round their necks, look ridiculously like clergymen with their bands on. The old man takes one of these medicine bottles, and reads the directions: "Two tablespoonfuls to be given immediately she awakes, and after that, the same quantity every four hours." "And she won't take it from any other hand than mine or Lily's," he muses. "If Alfred doesn't come home, and she doesn't wake, I must get somebody to go for Lily." As he stands debating with himself what is best to be done, he hears a tap at the door. It heralds the appearance of a young woman, one of the lodgers in the upper part of the house. She has her hat and shawl on, and a basket is on her arm. "Ah, Mrs. Podmore," he says abstractedly, "will you step inside?"