"No, no," stammered Mr. Tapster, "not upstairs. The children are upstairs." Mr. Tapster's round, prominent eyes were shadowed with a great horror and an even greater surprise. He stood staring at the man before him, his hands clasped in a wholly unconscious gesture of supplication. The constable gradually edged himself backwards into the dining-room. Realising that he must take on himself the onus of decision, he gave a quiet look round. "If that's the case," he said firmly, "we had better bring her in here. That sofa that you have there, sir, will do nicely, for her to be laid upon while they try to bring her round. We've got a doctor already----" Mr. Tapster bent his head; he was too much bewildered to propose any other plan; and then he turned--turned to see his hall invaded by a strange and sinister quartette. It was composed of two policemen and of two of those loafers of whom he so greatly disapproved; they were carrying a hurdle, from which Mr. Tapster quickly averted his eyes. But though he was able to shut out the sight he feared to see, he could not prevent himself from hearing certain sounds--those, for instance, made by the two loafers, who breathed with ostentatious difficulty as if to show they were unaccustomed to bearing even so comparatively light a burden as Flossy drowned. There came a sudden short whisper-filled delay; the doorway of the dining-room was found to be too narrow, and the hurdle was perforce left in the hall. An urgent voice, full of wholly unconscious irony, muttered in Mr. Tapster's ear: "Of course you would like to see her, sir," and he felt himself being propelled forward. Making an effort to bear himself so that he should not feel afterwards ashamed of his lack of nerve, he forced himself to stare with dread-filled yet fascinated eyes at that which had just been laid upon the leather sofa. Flossy's hat--the shabby hat which had shocked Mr. Tapster's sense of what was seemly--had gone; her fair hair had all come down, and hung in pale, gold wisps about the face already fixed in the soft dignity which seems so soon to drape the features of those who die by drowning. Her widely-opened eyes were now wholly emptied of the anguish with which they had gazed on Mr. Tapster in this very room less than an hour ago. Her mean brown serge gown, from which the water was still dripping, clung closely to her limbs, revealing the slender body which had four times endured, on behalf of Mr. Tapster, the greatest of woman's natural ordeals. But that thought, it is scarcely necessary to say, did not come to add an extra pang to those which that unfortunate man was now suffering; for Mr. Tapster naturally thought maternity was in every married woman's day's work--and pleasure. * * * * *