There was no one in the sitting-room when Hamish Channing entered it. The maid said Mr. Yorke had gone out; Mrs. Yorke was putting her children to bed. On the table, side by side with the papers containing the three great reviews, lay a copy of the work. Hamish took it up eagerly, anxious to see the new and good writing that had superseded the old. He could not find it. One or two bad passages, that he specially remembered, caught his eye; they were there still, unaltered. Had Gerald carelessly overlooked them? Hamish was turning over the pages in some wonder, when Winny came in. Came in, cross, fractious, tearful. Lonely as Mrs. Gerald Yorke's life had been in Gloucestershire, she had long wished herself back, for the one in London was becoming too trying. Winny had none of the endurance that some wives can show, and love and suffer on. She came tip to Hamish with outstretched hand. But that he and Ellen proved the generous friends they did, she could not have borne things. Many and many a day there would have been no dinner for the poor little girls, no stop-gap for the petty creditors supplying the daily wants, no comforts of any sort at home, save for the unobtrusive, silently aiding hand of Hamish Channing. "What is the matter, Winny?" asked Hamish, in relation to the tears. And he spoke very much as he would to a child. In fact, Mrs. Gerald Yorke had mostly to be treated as one. "Gerald has been so cross; he boxed little Kitty's ears, and nearly boxed mine," pleaded poor Winny, putting herself into a low rocking-chair, near the window. "It is so unreasonable of him, you know, Mr. Channing, to vent it upon us. It's just as if it were our fault." "Vent what?" asked Hamish, taking a seat at the table, and turning to face her. "All of it," said Winny, in her childish, fractious way. "His shortness of money, and the many bothers he is in. I can't help it. I would if I could, but if I can't, I can't, and Gerald knows I can't." "In bothers as usual?" spoke Hamish, in his gay way. "He is never out of them, Mr. Channing; you know he is not; and they get worse and worse. Gerald has no certain income at all; and it seems to me that what he earns by writing, whether it's for magazines or whether it's for newspapers, is always drawn beforehand, for he never has any money to bring home. Of course the tradespeople come and ask for their money; of course the landlady expects to be paid her weekly rent; and when they insist on seeing Gerald, or stop him when he goes out, he comes back in such a passion you never saw. She made him savage this evening, and he took and boxed Kitty." "She! Who?" "The landlady--Miss Cook." "Winny, I paid Miss Cook myself, last week." "Oh, but I didn't tell you there was more owing to her; I didn't like to," answered helpless Winny. "There is; and she has begun to worry always. She gets things in for us, and wants to be paid for them." "Of course she does," thought Hamish. "Where's Gerald?" he asked.