Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history. The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dear America!--see to it that such things were made impossible!" Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia, mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late. Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but healthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things. The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure, the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was another loud ring at the front door. French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to listen; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptly away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he was laughing and crooning over the boy. "The Pobble that lost his toes Had once as many as we."