Having been permitted to take his place among them, and to chop material for mincemeat at their kitchen table, it was felt by them all that their boarder could never be a stranger to the widow and her children again. Through pride and through shyness they had held him at arm's length, but now that they had joked together about George Boult's peculiarities, and he had ventured with playful force to take the nutmeg grater from Bessie's weary fingers, valiantly completing her task himself, it would have been impossible, even if desirable, to return to their earlier relations. Bessie, who had treated him with a carefully masked hauteur in the beginning, was among the first to place him on terms of easy familiarity. She had strongly resented the inclusion of a stranger in their family circle, and presently was welcoming his presence there as supplying the one item of interest in the _ménage_. "A year ago, mama, we should not have admitted Mr. Boult's Manchester man to the same table with us. And now, here we are keeping his plates hot, if he comes in late, and telling him all our secrets." "Mama and I don't tell Mr. Gibbon any secrets," Deleah said. "I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at arm's length." "Who wants to keep him at arm's length? I only mentioned I did not feel called upon to tell him any secrets." "And I only said he wouldn't care to hear your secrets--if you have any." "I haven't," Deleah admitted, laughing. "I have, then. And I shall tell them to who I like, spite of Deda's pertness, mama." "Say to 'whom you like,' Bessie." "Mama, will you speak to Deleah? She is being impertinent to me again." How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr. Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread. To know that a male creature, who could not be indifferent to her, was an inmate of the house was as she often said to herself--something. She took no interest in him, of course. A young man out of a draper's shop! But it was more amusing to subjugate even such an one as he than to have no one at her feet. So, at the hour when Boult's great shutters went up over the front of the six shops in Market Street, and the Manchester man was free to go to his evening meal, Bessie took an extreme care to be ready to receive him. She had allowed herself to become a little slovenly over her appearance in the day-time--who was there to look at her, or care what she wore in the sitting-room over the shop? But by supper-time she would have changed into her most becoming frock, would have arranged her hair to the greatest advantage, would have rubbed with a rough towel, or beaten with a hair-brush the plump, fair cheeks she considered too pale.