Mr. Boult had stayed his hand from dealing summarily with the young man, as it had been his instinct to do. After all, he was William Day's son; the son of the one friend whom, in all his life, he had made. The son of the widow of Bridge Street, also; and he, George Boult, had been the arbiter of her destiny, of the destiny of her children, and was proud of the fact. The result had not been altogether satisfactory. No amount of teaching or of bullying would ever make a business woman of the mother; but then he knew that he had enjoyed the teaching and bullying. He felt a glow of satisfaction, when he read her name in the small white letters on a black ground above the shop door, "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," and remembered it was he who had caused that legend to be written there. It pleased him to recall the handsome woman in her silks and laces, who had extended a patronising hand to him, now and again, on those Sunday afternoons he had spent with her husband--the haughty-looking, dark-skinned, dark-eyed beauty, as he conjured her to his mind's eye--and then to enter the gloomy little shop, and to see this same woman--was it in truth the same?--her black gown covered by a large white, bibbed apron, white sleeves to her elbows, standing behind the counter, to weigh treacle into a customer's jar, or to descant on the merits of various scrubbing soaps. "My doing," George Boult said to himself, and was pleased. His mother had many messages for Bernard, of course. A parcel of a couple of shirts for him too, which she and the girls had made for him, stitching busily together after the day's work was done. He was to write oftener. He was to send her his socks to mend. To take long walks into the country; and not by any means to be tempted to spend his evenings at the horrid hotel which Mr. Boult had complained to his mother he frequented. In the morning a little parcel was put into the boarder's hand, with the request that he would give it to Bernard. It contained a sovereign the poor woman, who had not a penny to spare, had taken from a sum due to meet a certain account, that day. The boy's salary was so very, very small; the wholesale house must wait for payment. When Deleah arrived home from her school on the afternoon of that day, she found the shop in charge of Mr. Pretty alone, a state of things never permitted except at meal-times. Deleah went into the house and ran upstairs with a foreboding mind. Reaching the dark landing upon which the sitting-room opened, her heart sank within her at the sound of loud weeping proceeding from that room. Her mother was dying, or dead, bemoaned by Bessie, she decided, her thoughts leaping to the worst that could befall.