"Got you this time!" he screamed to Joe, his face distorted with hate. "_Mr. Spink!_" he cried to somebody who must have been near by. The engineer made a grab at him and seized him by the head. "Got _you_, ye mean!" he bellowed and jerked the other bodily into the room. "Ah, ye dirty spyin tyke!--I'll learn you!" He heaved his enemy from his knees to his feet and closed with him. The struggle was that of a parrot in the clutch of a tiger. Joe carried his enemy to the door and slung him out head first. Alf brought up with a bang against a big car which had just drawn up outside. A little lady sat in it. "Will you get out of my way, please?" she said coldly to the man sprawling on his hands and knees in the dust at her feet, as she proceeded to descend. The prostrate man raised his eyes and blinked. The lady passed him by as she might have passed a dead puppy lying in the road. Joe crossed the path and examined with a certain detached interest, the door of the car against which Alf's head had crashed. "Why, yo've made quite a dent in your nice car," he said. "Pity." And he walked away down the street after Mr. Spink who was retiring discreetly round the corner. Mrs. Lewknor entered the cottage. Ruth was sitting in the kitchen, her hands in her lap, dazed. The lady went over to her. "It's all right, Ruth," she said gently in the other's ear. Slowly Ruth recovered and poured the tale of the last twenty-four hours into the ear of her friend. It was the cruelty of her mother-in-law more than anything else that troubled her: for it was to her significant of the attitude of the world. "That's her!" she said. "And that's them!--and that's how it is!" Mrs. Lewknor comforted her; but Ruth refused to be comforted. "Ah, you don't know em," she said. "But I been through it, me and little Alice. See I'm alone again now Ernie's gone. And so they got me. And they know it and take advantage--and Mrs. Caspar, that sly and cruel, she leads em on." "I think perhaps she's not as bad as she likes to make herself out," Mrs. Lewknor answered. She opened her bag, took out a letter, and put it in Ruth's hand. It was from Anne Caspar, angular as the writer in phrase alike and penmanship, and in the pseudo-business vein of the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist. _Dear Madam,--If your Committee can help Mrs. Caspar in the Moot, board for herself and four children, I will pay rent of same._ _Yours faithfully, Anne Caspar._ Later just as twilight began to fall Ruth went up to Rectory Walk. Anne was standing on the patch of lawn in front of the little house amid her tobacco plants, sweet-scented in the dusk, a shawl drawn tight about her gaunt shoulders. Ruth halted on the path outside. "I do thank you, Mrs. Caspar," she said, deep and quivering. The elder woman did not look at her, did not invite her in. She tugged at the ends of her shawl and sniffed the evening with her peculiar smirk.