For answer, Mrs. Yorke broke into a burst of sobs. It was coming, she thought. But Gerald had no mind for a scene there; and so held his tongue to a better opportunity. But the tears continued, and Gerald angrily ordered her not to be a child. "You've never kissed one of us," sobbed Winny. "You've not as much as kissed baby." "Would you have had me kiss you on the platform?" he angrily demanded. "Make a family embracing of it, for the benefit of the public! I'll kiss you when we get in. You are more ridiculous than ever, Winny." The three little things, sitting opposite, were still as mice, looking shyly at him with their timid blue eyes. Gerald took one upon his knee for a moment and pressed its face to his own, fondly enough. Fortune was very unkind to him he thought, in not giving him a fine house for these children, and a thousand or two per annum to keep them on. "Are we going to your chambers, Gerald?" "That is another foolish question, Winny! My chambers are hardly large enough for me. I have taken lodgings for you this morning; the best I could at a minute's notice. London is full of drawbacks and inconveniences: if you have to put up with some, you must remember that you have brought them on yourself." "Will there be any dinner for us?" asked Winny timidly. "The poor little girls are very hungry." "You are going to Mrs. Hamish Channing's until tonight. I daresay she'll have dinner ready for you. Afterwards you can call at the rooms, and settle with the landlady what you will want got in." The change in Mrs. Yorke's face was like magic; a glad brightness overspread it. Once when she was ill in lodgings at Helstonleigh, before her husband removed her into Gloucestershire, her eldest child being then an infant, Hamish Channing's wife had been wonderfully kind to her. To hear that she was going to her seemed like a haven of refuge in this wilderness of a London, which she had never until now visited. "Oh, thank you, Gerald. I am so glad." "I suppose you have brought some money with you," said Gerald. "I think I have about sixteen shillings," she answered, beginning to turn out her purse. "Where's the rest? "What rest?" "The money for the furniture. You wrote me word you had sold it." "But there were the debts, Gerald. I sold the furniture to pay them. How else could I have left?--they'd not have let me come away. It was not enough to pay all; there's six or seven pounds unpaid still." An exceedingly blank look settled on Gerald's face. The one ray of comfort looming out of this checkmating step of his wife's, reconciling him to it in a small degree, had been the thought of the money she would receive for the furniture. But what he might have said was stopped by a shriek from Winny, who became suddenly aware that the cab, save for themselves, was empty. "The luggage, Gerald, the luggage! O Gerald, the luggage!"