"Well, if anybody can come at his heart, it will be the child," thought Eileen, whose own advances had been steadily rejected and ignored. She was sorry for the lonely man with the sad history, and was a little afraid of him too; but when she whispered a word of her fear to her husband, Nat stoutly declared it was "all right." Pat could do as he liked, and make what advances he chose. The worst that could happen would be that Jim would turn a deaf ear to him. He would never harm the child. He was not that sort. There were stories against him, it was true; but nothing they need fear as regards their own child. Nat was not troubled with a vivid imagination, and Eileen had long learnt to subdue her fears when her husband told her she was frightening herself about nothing. She would be glad enough to lighten the dreary lot of "Surly Jim," and watched with some curiosity the advances of Pat towards him. At first little progress seemed made. At table the two hardly looked at each other, and Jim never spoke unless actually obliged; but now and again she would see them sitting together in the boat, which had always been Jim's summer sitting-room, and gradually it seemed as though there was more talk between them. She could see that Pat began to chatter away freely enough, and sometimes she fancied that Jim took a share in the conversation. His pipe would go out, and be laid aside. He would lean towards the child, and seem to be listening with some intentness. Eileen was not a little curious to know what all this talk was about, but Pat was singularly reticent, and seldom spoke of Jim, though he would chatter to his mother about anything and everything else. Once she did venture to ask what they had been talking about, and got an answer that surprised her not a little. "We talk about a lot of things; Jim knows such a lot when you once get him to talk," said Pat, with a certain quiet reserve of manner. "But I think he likes it best when we talk about God. You see he'd almost forgotten about Him. He's remembering now, and it's very interesting. We've begun at the beginning of the Bible, and we skip a good deal, so we shall soon get to the part about Jesus, and I think that'll be the most interesting of all!" [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER III _AN ODD PAIR_