"What did she say your name was, my dear?" "Olivier. Mary Olivier." "I don't call to mind anybody of that name in the Dale. But I suppose I brought you into the world same as the rest of 'em." Miss Kendal gave a little bound in her chair. "Does anybody know where Pussy is?" The claw hand stirred in the red and yellow pocket-handkerchief. "Ye've come to see the old man, have ye? Ay. Eh." When he talked he coughed. A dreadful sound, as if he dragged up out of himself a long, rattling chain. It hurt you to look at him. Pity hurt you. Once he had been young, like Roddy. Then he had been middle-aged, with hanging jaw and weak eyelids, like Dr. Charles. Now he was old, old; he sat doubled up, coughing and weeping, in a chair. But you could see that Miss Kendal was proud of him. She thought him wonderful because he kept on living. Supposing he was _your_ father and you had to sit with him, all your life, in a room smelling of rotten apples, could you bear it? Could you bear it for a fortnight? Wouldn't you wish--wouldn't you wish--supposing Papa--all your life. But if you couldn't bear it that would mean-- No. No. She put her hand on the arm of his chair, to protect him, to protect him from her thoughts. The claw fingers scrabbled, groping for her hand. "Would ye like to be an old man's bed-fellow?" "Pussy says it isn't her bed-time yet, Father." When you went away Miss Kendal stood on the doorstep looking after you. The last you saw of her was a soft grimace of innocent gaiety. X. The Vicar of Renton. He wanted to see her. Mamma had left her in the room with him, going out with an air of self-conscious connivance. Mr. Spencer Rollitt. Hard and handsome. Large face, square-cut, clean-shaved, bare of any accent except its eyebrows, its mouth a thin straight line hardly visible in its sunburn. Small blue eyes standing still in the sunburn, hard and cold. When Mr. Rollitt wanted to express heartiness he had to fall back on gesture, on the sudden flash of white teeth; he drew in his breath, sharply, between the straight, close lips, with a sound: "Fivv-vv!" She watched him. Under his small handsome nose his mouth and chin together made one steep, straight line. This lower face, flat and naked, without lips, stretched like another forehead. At the top of the real forehead, where his hat had saved his skin, a straight band, white, like a scar. Yet Mr. Spencer Rollitt's hair curled and clustered out at the back of his head in perfect innocence. He was smiling his muscular smile, while his little hard cold eyes held her in their tight stare. "Don't you think you would like to take a class in my Sunday School?" "I'm afraid I wouldn't like it at all." "Nothing to be afraid of. I should give you the infants' school."