"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always downstairs"--(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, but _he_" (again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is always there." "Well, why not?" "Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out of a draper's shop?" "But he comes to call on people in a gro--" "That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there, remember." "Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Saturdays I am at home all day." "I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions. CHAPTER XIV A Tea-Party In Bridge Street His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and those hours he had been wont to pass with his friend William Day being still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons. The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's one blessed day was no longer hers, to be passed from morn to eve in the midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business worries. She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation. But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers" and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers might be saved from starving. So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat, beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street. Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the passers-by beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration who passed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and their domestic economies. "There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace shawl before." "Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.