It seemed Elizabeth's lot always to have to put aside her own troubles for the trouble of somebody else. Almost immediately after Tom Cliffe's death her little Henry fell ill with scarlatina and remained for many months in a state of health so fragile as to engross all her thought and care. It was with difficulty that she contrived a few times to go for Henry's medicines to the shop where "John Smith" served. She noticed that every time he looked healthier, brighter, freer from that aspect of broken-down respectability which had touched her so much. He did not dress any better, but still "the gentleman" in him could never be hidden or lost, and he said his master treated him "like a gentleman," which was apparently a pleasant novelty. "I have some time to myself also. Shop shuts at nine, and I get up at 5 A. M.--bless us! what would my Aunt Hilary say? And it's not for nothing. There are more ways than one of turning an honest penny, when a young fellow really sets about it. Elizabeth, you used to be a literary character yourself; look into the ---- and the ----," (naming two popular magazines), "and if you find a series of especially clever papers on sanitary reform, and so on, I did 'em:" He slapped his chest with Ascott's merry laugh of old. It cheered Elizabeth for a long while afterward. By-and-by she had to take little Henry to Brighton, and lost sight of "John Smith" for some time longer. It was on a snowy February day, when, having brought the child home quite strong, and received unlimited gratitude and guineas from the delighted father, Master Henry's faithful nurse stood in her usual place at the dining-room door, waiting for the interminable grace of "only five minutes more" to be over, and her boy carried ignominiously but contentedly to bed. The footman knocked at the door. "A young man wanting to speak to master on particular business. "Let him send in his name." "He says you wouldn't know it, Sir." "Show him in, then. Probably a case of charity, as usual. Oh!" And Mr. Ascott's opinion was confirmed by the appearance of the shabby young man with the long beard, whom Elizabeth did not wonder he never recognized in the least. She ought to have retired, and yet she could not. She hid herself partly behind the door, afraid of passing Ascott; dreading alike to wound him by recognition or non-recognition. But he took no notice. He seemed excessively agitated. "Come a-begging, young man, I suppose? Wants a situation, as hundreds do, and think that I have half the clerkships in the city at my disposal, and that I am made of money besides. But it's no good, I tell you, Sir; I never give nothing to strangers, except--Here, Henry, my son, take that person there this half crown."