‘I don’t believe you’ve been listening to a single word, Paul. You stand there with your eyes fixed on vacancy, and only nod your head and grunt.’ ‘I assure you, Margaret, dear,’ he stammered, coming to the surface as from a long swim under water, ‘I rarely miss anything you say. Only the Crack came so very suddenly. You were saying that Dick’s niece was coming to us—Joan—er—Thingumybob, and——’ ‘So you heard some of it,’ she laughed quietly, relenting. ‘And I hope the Crack you speak about is in your head, not in mine.’ ‘It’s everywhere,’ he said with his grave humour. ‘That’s the trouble, you see; one never knows——’ Then, seeing that she was looking anxiously at the walls of the house and at the roof, he dropped his teasing and came back to solid earth again. ‘And how soon do you expect her?’ he asked in his most practical voice. ‘When does she arrive upon the scene?’ ‘Why, Paul, I’ve already told you twice! You really are getting more absent-minded every day. Joan comes to-morrow, or the day after—she’s to telegraph which—and stays here for as long as she can manage—a fortnight or so, I expect. She works herself to death, I believe, in town with those poor children, and I want her to get a real rest before she goes back.’ ‘Waifs, aren’t they?’ he asked, picking up the thread of the discourse like a thing heard in a dream, ‘lost children of the slums?’ ‘Yes. You’ll see them for yourself probably, as she has some of them down usually for a day in the country. One can be of use in that way—and it’s so nice to help. Dick, you know, was absorbed in the scheme. You will help, won’t you, when the time comes?’ He promised; and they went in together to tea. CHAPTER XX ‘This is him,’ cried Jonah breathlessly, pointing with a hand that wore ink like a funeral glove. ‘I’ve got him this time. Look!’ And he waved a half-sheet of paper in his uncle’s face. ‘I’ve made one too—oh, a beauty!’ echoed Toby; ‘and I haven’t made half such a mess as you.’ Three of her fingers were in mourning. A crape-like line running from the nose to the corner of the mouth, lent her a certain distinction. She, too, waved a bit of paper in the air. ‘Mine’s the real Jack-of-the-Inkpot though, isn’t he, Uncle Paul?’ exclaimed the boy, leaving the schoolroom table, and running up to show it. ‘They’re all real—as real as your awful fingers,’ decreed Paul. He had been explaining how to make the figure of the Ink Sprite that leaves blots wherever he goes, blackens penholders and fingers, and leaves his crawly marks across even the neatest page of writing. Two blots and a line-then fold the paper. Open it again and the ink has run into the semblance of an outlandish figure with countless legs and arms, and a fantastic head; something between a spider, a centipede, and a sprite. ‘It’s Jack-of-the-Inkpot,’ he told them. ‘Half the time he does his dirty work invisibly, and if he touches blotting-paper—he vanishes altogether.’