‘I did not,’ she said, ‘know all your father’s friends; but it is a long time since all ended in that way. What do you know of any such friends?’ ‘It is an uncommon name,’ said John. ‘Yes, it is an uncommon name. It is the sort of name that actors assume, and people of that kind. Ah, here is Susie, ready. Take your brother wherever you think he will like best to go. Don’t hurry. I shall not be anxious, as long as you are here in time for tea.’ She had risen with a sort of uneasy smile, and went with them to the door, touching Susie’s dress with her hand, smoothing down the little jacket she wore. When Susie had preceded her brother out of the room, Mrs. Sandford transferred her touch, nervously, quickly, to John’s arm. ‘Such people are no friends for you,’ she said, hastily. ‘Avoid them wherever you meet them. Avoid them! they are not friends for you.’ She had made no acknowledgment, and yet she had made more than an acknowledgment. The self-betrayal was instantaneous, but it was complete. Then it _was_ his father of whom Montressor would not speak. Poor May! What had happened that he should be called Poor May! CHAPTER V. BROTHER AND SISTER. Susie knew her way about, and where to go and what to see. She was not disturbed by the noise and clangour of what she called ‘The Underground,’ a mode of conveyance which at first bewildered the country boy, to whom the clash of train after train, the noise, the complication, the crowds pouring this way and that took away all understanding, and who felt himself a child in the hands of his sister, who knew exactly when the right train which she wanted was coming, and all about it, and steered him in her deft London way through the tumult. ‘How can you tell which is which?’ John cried, feeling the dust in his throat, the din in his ears, and his eyes growing red and hot with the flutter of the crowd, and of all the sights that flashed past him, and the smoke and suffocating atmosphere. “Oh, I can’t tell. I only know,” said Susie. She was at her ease in the midst of the commotion, looking as calm and as modest and composed as if she were walking in country lanes, not afraid of the thronged stations of the Metropolitan, the dingy platforms, the confusion of porters shouting, and doors clanging. John had meant to take care of his sister, but it was he who clung to her in the midst of the bewilderment and the noise. She knew which train to take, she knew when to change into another, where to stop; though to him they bore no distinction, neither the stations, the names of which he could never discover, nor the directions--for as yet, John was not even aware which was north or south, east or west.