"Well, just to talk this over, and for my darling's sake, I will for once demean myself;" and Ann Packet, red in the face with excitement, seated herself on the verge of the horsehair chair. Ann Packet had broken through the ice at last; it had been a trouble of long duration; she who knew Mattie's secret, guessed where Mattie's chance of happiness rested, she thought. But it is delicate work to strive for the happiness of other people, and leads to woful failures, as a rule. Ann Packet was nervous; the plunge had been made, and the truth must escape--she dashed into the subject, for "her gal's sake." "Lookee here, sir--it's no good my keeping back my 'pinion, that our Mattie is really fond of you! When she was a girl in Suffolk Street, and you a bit of a boy, she used to worry me about you, and yet I never guessed it! When she growed bigger and you growed bigger, she showed her liking less, but it peeped out at times unbeknown to herself, and yet I never guessed it! But when she was ill in Tenchester Street, and I left here to nus her, the truth came on me all of a heap, and mazed me drefful!" "What made you think of this--this nonsense, then?" he asked. "She spoke about you in her fever, when her head was gone," said Ann; "of how your happiness hadn't come, and yet she'd worked so hard for it. And somehow I guessed it then--and when she came here, and was, for the fust time, happy in her way--I knowed it!" "Folly! folly!" murmured Sidney. "And they who says that she had no right to come here, don't know the rights of things--she liked you best of all, sir, and she comes here, duty bound, to do her best. If they says a word aginst her in MY hearing for her coming here, let 'em look out, that's all!" Sidney sat, with his fingers interlaced, thoughtful and grave. "You may go now, Ann--I'm sorry that you have put this into my head. It can't be true." "True or not, just ask her some day when you feel that you can't do without her help, and see who's wrong of us two. And you'll have to ask her, mind that!" Ann rose and bustled towards the door. At the door a new form of argument suggested itself, and she came back again. "You're blind enough not to care for good looks so much now--if you can get a good heart think yourself lucky, sir. You've just the chance of making one woman happy in your life, and in finding your life very different to what it is now, with a blundering gal like me to worry you. She won't think any the wus of you for being blind and helpless--she's much too good for you!" "Well, that's true enough, Ann."