“You look a bit white, dearie. Getting tired, are you?” He came back to her. “Didn’t _you_ say a word to him, Dandy Anne? Didn’t you try to comfort the poor lad?” She smiled bravely. “I took him some soup, Daddy! Harriet made it, and I ‘dished up.’ I don’t think he wanted to talk. He’s very tired.” Hamer said no more, looking down at her anxiously, trying to read her face. Sorrow was for bringing folks together, said Hamer’s simple philosophy, but it seemed to have failed here. He couldn’t think of any trouble in which his first longing would not be to feel Dandy’s arms round his neck. Things were wrong somewhere for his little girl. Had he brought her to Watters only to seek diligently for pain? “Please hurry a little bit, Daddy dear!” He gave her a last glance, turning reluctantly, with words evidently trembling on his lips; then marched off up the stair. Above, she could hear him pounding at Helwise’s door, and presently he had her out on the landing. “It was his father!” Helwise chattered still. “Nonsense, my dear! You’re a bit overstrung, that’s what it is! You want somebody to pet you and tuck you up on the sofa with a hot bottle--that’s it, isn’t it? Now you put your hand through my arm and we’ll trot along down to the fire. Why, you’re just shivering, poor dear! I’ve got a plan to propose to you, if you’ll take it on. What do you say to sending Lancaster for a trip after he’s got things in working order again--say Egypt or the Canaries--and you shut up house and come over to Watters? If we get a fairish spring we might try a motor-tour after Easter--how’d you like that? Cathedral cities, perhaps, or something of that sort. You keep Dandy company for a bit while I look in at the boy, and see if she can’t persuade you to think it over!” So Helwise, purring with excitement, was stayed with cushions and comforted with cathedrals in front of the drawing-room fire, and Dandy, very heart-sick and resentful at her selfish neglect, yet remembered that she was something of Lanty’s, and was patient and sweet with her therefore, mapping out a tour on the hearthrug, with the whole of her being reaching across the hall. Hamer knocked once, and went straight in to the lonely figure without a moment’s hesitation, setting big, raising hands on its shoulders. The Hamers of the world may do these things with impunity, for in their rare, angelic sincerity they carry an Open Sesame through the locked gates of the furthest shrinking sorrow. And though a dreaded somebody was looking over his shoulder at last, Lanty let his paper lie, and neither moved nor minded. Hamer’s eye passed over it as he drew up a chair and sat down close. “I had to go to Manchester. Only just home, or I’d have been down--_there_--with you. I was somewhere on the marsh, as it was, until after three. Had anything to eat?”