"Fond!" Mrs. Bickers echoed him. "Why, Arthur, she's all the world to Mr. Bickers an' me, our Essie. She's such a bright one! Our Essie came to us very late in life, and you know I reckon we've never had a minute's trouble since. Looking back on what we'd had before, that's why we say, Mr. Bickers an' me, that we reckon she was a gift sent straight out of heaven. We're sure of it. Brought up with old folk like us, she'd grow up quiet and odd like some children are, wouldn't you think? Or likely enough discontented, finding it dull? But you've only got to look at our Essie to feel happy. There's not many can say that of a daughter, not for every bit of eighteen years, Arthur. We reckon we're uncommon blessed, Mr. Bickers an' me." In comes Essie with a steaming dish: "Oh, these sausages, Mother! Jus' look at them sizzling! Oh, aren't they funny, though!" He does not post his letter on the way to school. He does not post it on the way back from school. He carries it up-stairs again in his pocket when he goes to bed. Scruples! Scruples--he lies awake and reasons the scruples; he tosses restlessly and damns the scruples. Scruples! In the morning he has settled them. He rises very early before the house is astir. He comes down to post his letter and goes at once through the back yard which offers nearer way to the letter-box. "Hulloa, Arthur! Why, you're up early!" This time it is Mr. Bickers, hailing him through the open door of his workshop where he is busily occupied with blow-flame and soldering-irons. "Well, not so early as you, Mr. Bickers. I thought I was first for once." The cert. plumber laughs, evidently well-pleased. "Come along in an' give a hand. Soldering, this is. Me! I'm never abed after five o'clock summer-times." "I often think you're wonderfully young for your years, Mr. Bickers." Another laugh of satisfaction. "I'm younger than I was a score years back; and that's a fact, Arthur." "What's the secret of it?" "Why," says Mr. Bickers, "there is a secret to it, sure enough. It's this way, Arthur. Now you put the solder-pot on the lamp again. There's matches. This way--I was fifty-two years growing old, and I've been close on nineteen years growing young. Ever since-- Hullo! careful with it!" "Ever since--?" says Mr. Wriford, his head averted, fumbling with the lamp, fumbling with his thoughts. "Ever since our Essie came to us." "Yes," says Mr. Wriford, and adds "Yes, that's much what Mrs. Bickers was telling me only yesterday." "Why, it's the same with both of us," says Mr. Bickers; and then changes his voice to the voice that Mr. Wriford recognises for that in which he reads the scriptural portions at night. "You mark this from me, Arthur," Mr. Bickers continues. "You're a young man. You mark what I tell you--"