"Here, m'm," said the astonished Buck, "come and set down on the bench." Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can't guess?" "If it's Richards, seven----" "The gentleman's name--I came with--is Chaffinger----" "You said----?" "Chaffinger." She was too close to him to notice that he too had suddenly become white. He still held her, but slowly half a cubic foot of air came from his chest. Probably with a purely mechanical movement he set her on her feet. His hand was at his sound ear. "Will you say it again, m'm?" he said huskily. Louie did so. "Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m'm?" "Oh," Louie choked, "don't call me 'm'm'!" "You did say Captain Chaffinger?" Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began to speak low and rapidly. "Send me away if you like--perhaps I was stupid to come--but I wanted--I wanted--I couldn't bear it any longer--I'm all alone--father! I'm Louie--Louie----" Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was his daughter--his daughter---- And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life. He repeated the phrase after her. "Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said. "Yes, I live there----" "You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?" "Mortlake Road." Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "_The_ Bible, Miss?" Now he said to his daughter: "_The_ Mortlake Road?" "I suppose so." "You live there?" "Yes." Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings' bus. And they rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his fancy through the years. This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal. "Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things, her tears----