"Don't bother!" he grumbled. He felt a morbid satisfaction in this aggravation of discomfort, almost symbolic as it was of his sunk fortunes. "Oh, but it'll freeze 'ard to-night, sir. Let me make it up." Taking his sullen silence for consent, she ran downstairs and reappeared with some sticks. Soon there were signs of life, which Mary Ann assiduously encouraged by blowing at the embers with her mouth. Lancelot looked on in dull apathy, but as the fire rekindled and the little flames leapt up and made Mary Ann's flushed face the one spot of colour and warmth in the cold, dark room, Lancelot's torpidity vanished suddenly. The sensuous fascination seized him afresh, and ere he was aware of it he was lifting the pretty face by the chin. "I'm so sorry to be so troublesome, Mary Ann. There, you shall give me a kiss to show you bear no malice." The warm lips obediently met his, and for a moment Lancelot forgot his worries while he held her soft cheek against his. This time the shock of returning recollection was not so violent as before. He sat up in his chair, but his right arm still twined negligently round her neck, the fingers patting the warm face. "A fellow must have something to divert his mind," he thought, "or he'd go mad. And there's no harm done--the poor thing takes it as a kindness, I'm sure. I suppose _her_ life's dull enough. We're a pair." He felt her shoulders heaving a little, as if she were gulping down something. At last she said, "You ain't troublesome. I ought to ha' yerd ye come in." He released her suddenly. Her words broke the spell. The vulgar accent gave him a shudder. "Don't you _hear_ a bell ringing?" he said, with dual significance. "Nosir," said Mary Ann ingenuously. "I'd yer it in a moment if there was. I yer it in my dreams, I'm so used to it. One night I dreamt the missus was boxin' my yers and askin' me if I was deaf and I said to 'er----" "Can't you say 'her'?" cried Lancelot, cutting her short impatiently. "Her," said Mary Ann. "Then why do you say ''er'?" "Missus told me to. She said my own way was all wrong." "Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot. "It's missus that has corrupted you, is it? And pray what used you to say?" "She," said Mary Ann. Lancelot was taken aback. "She!" he repeated. "Yessir," said Mary Ann, with a dawning suspicion that her own vocabulary was going to be vindicated; "whenever I said 'she' she made me say ''er,' and whenever I said 'her' she made me say 'she.' When I said 'her and me' she made me say 'me and she,' and when I said 'I got it from she,' she made me say 'I got it from 'er.'" "Bravo! A very lucid exposition," said Lancelot, laughing. "Did she set you right in any other particulars?" "Eessir--I mean yessir," replied Mary Ann, the forbidden words flying to her lips like prisoned skylarks suddenly set free. "I used to say, 'Gie I thek there broom, oo't?' 'Arten thee goin' to?' 'Her did say to I.' 'I be goin' on to bed.' 'Look at----'"