"I meet Deleah sometimes as she comes home from school," the young man artlessly continued. "I dare say she's told you I sometimes meet her?" No, Mrs. Day did not remember hearing Deleah mention that interesting fact. "No harm in that, I suppose, Mrs. Day? You don't object, if Deleah doesn't?" "Harm?" repeated Mrs. Day, only half conscious of what was said, thinking of Bernard going wretchedly about his hated work with a "sharp watch" set on his doings. "I mean I wouldn't do anything to annoy you or Deleah--" It was a relief that at that moment Bessie descended, her hair in order, a look of pleasant excitement on her plump face. No one need half-heartedly try to carry on a conversation with Reggie when once Bessie was present to monopolise him. And then Deleah and Franky, their cheeks rosy from exercise, appeared. Franky went to his mother and climbed on her lap, and Deleah sat close to her side, a little too apparently, perhaps, leaving the young man and Bessie to carry on their sparkling conversation uninterrupted. When Emily came in, to lay the tea-table, the two men got up to go. "Mama, Reggie will stay if you ask him," Bessie said. How triumphant she felt, how her eyes sparkled when Reggie said at once he should like to--rather! "And Mr. Boult will stay to tea too, mama," Deleah said quickly. She did not need the heavy silence which fell to tell she had offended; not Bessie's warning scowl, nor her mother's piteous look of appeal. As no one seconded the invitation, "Do stay," Deleah said. And he gracefully yielded. "Since you are so polite, I don't mind if I do," he said. He really felt honoured by the invitation, the first he had ever received in that house. The long low-ceilinged sitting-room above the grocer's shop was tenanted by ladies of whom in days gone by he had felt a certain awe. Down in the world as they were now, he never forgot that ancient attitude of theirs. Even when he bullied Mrs. Day, and advised her daughters to do the work of servants, he had not forgotten. Perhaps at such times he remembered it more than ever. His wife, dead for the last seven years, had been of a different make from these women. Finding nothing in himself to debar him from being an ornament in any society, he saw very well that the late Mrs. George Boult had been, as he put it, "of another kidney." He had been fairly content with her while he had her; she had been a good housekeeper; and had not crossed him in his wish to save money; but looking back upon the poor woman, he saw plainly that she had not the appearance of these ladies, nor had she spoken like them, nor possessed the ways of them. She had been all very well for his then condition, but times had changed for him; and here he was, well pleased to be sitting at the board of people who would not at one time have received the late Mrs. Boult under their roof, on terms of equality with Sir Francis Forcus's brother!