Downstairs Mrs. Austin was giving her son a cup of cocoa and asking questions about the young lady he had brought to her. "We don’t know anything about her, Sam," she said cautiously. "There is of course no doubt about her being in trouble, and looking as good as an angel, too, but one can never tell. I’d rather she’d have had some luggage. Don’t you think if she had come up from the country to stay with her friend, now, she’d have had some luggage?" "Well, yes, so she would in an ord’nary way--but we don’t know all the circumstances. And it was a first-class big house in a fashionable square, and she went up to the door as boldly as if she expected a welcome----" "Which she didn’t get, and they wouldn’t have anything to do with her there. That looks bad. For the rest you have only her own tale to go by." "Mother, are you going to turn her out?" asked Sam, with reproach in his voice. "No, Sam, I can’t do that. But I shall keep my eyes open." "You’ll be good to her, mother, I know." "Yes, of course." Mrs. Austin smiled, and her son knew that she would keep her word. He went away then with his cab, and Mrs. Austin closed her house for the night and went upstairs to bed, pausing on the landing by her new lodger’s door. Did the girl want anything, she wondered, and after a low knock she opened the door softly. Doris was kneeling by her bed-side, and with a little nod of satisfaction Mrs. Austin withdrew. Doris’s sleep, when at last she sought her couch, was long, so that when she awoke it was afternoon and she found her landlady standing by her bedside, with a little tray, on which was tea and toast. "You are very good to me, Mrs. Austin," she said, gratefully, as she partook of the refreshing tea. "I’m very pleased to have such a nice lodger, miss," said the widow, completely won over and forgetting all her misgivings, as her stout, good-humoured countenance expanded in a broad smile. "There are some who like gentlemen lodgers best, but I don’t. ’Give me a nice young lady,’ says I, ’and you may take all your gentlemen!’" Doris smiled a little dolefully. "But I haven’t very much money----" she began. "Don’t you worrit yourself about that, miss! The sovereign you gave me when you came in will see you through at least two weeks here, so far as lodging is concerned--of course the food will come to rather more--but it may be that you will find work, if it is work you are wanting, miss, though you do seem too much of a lady for that sort of thing." "I shall have to work," said Doris, "because I have very little money, and no one to give me any more." "Dear me, that’s bad. Might I make so bold, miss, as to ask if you have been running away from home--from your parents, miss?"